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WRAITHS 

AND 

REALITIES 



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WRAITHS 

AND 

REALITIES 



BY 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

V, 
AUTHOR OF "trails SUNWARD" "COLLECTED 
PLAYS AND POEMS," ETC. 




NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 

1918 






Copyright, 1918, by 
The Century Co. 



Published, March, 1918 



MAR -9 1318 



©CI.A481996 



WITH ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION 

TO 
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON 

WHO HAS EVER FACED LIFE WITH COURAGE 

AND ART WITH GENEROUS 

APPRECIATION 



PREFACE 

The voicing of a preference for classicism, realism 
or romanticism is nearly always the conscious or un- 
conscious preoccupation of critics of poetry. The 
classicist, wanting perfect beauty, stresses restraint 
— and is ever accused of praising what is academic 
or lacking in freedom or truth to life. The realist, 
stressing truth to life and minimizing restraint as to 
method or material, finds himself blamed for mistak- 
ing the mere raw material of life for ultimate art, and 
so for praising the sordid or commonplace. The 
romanticist, holding neither to restraint and mere 
beauty, nor to unrestraint and actuality, is prodded 
by both sides. By the classicist for lenience toward 
unrestraint; and by the realist who wishes the ma- 
terial of poetry to be taken only from the " every 
day life around us," and who therefore condemns all 
other material, whether of the past, the foreign pres- 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

ent, or the future, as remote, extraneous or " exotic." 
Yet the romanticist would seem to have the better 
theoretical viewpoint. For in not opposing beauty 
to truth, but in holding that " beauty is truth, truth 
beauty," and that the two are always varyingly 
blended in any genuine poetry whatever its subject 
or treatment, he has a creed that is more compre- 
hensive, and that if accepted by the poet will make 
for larger productivity. He does not insist that the 
poet must ever keep an eye on what is traditionally 
poetic, like the classicist, or on what is poetic in the 
immediate present, like the realist, but would let 
poetry come freely from any source of genuine won- 
der, beauty or truth. It is therefore not the roman- 
ticist poet, but the realist and classicist as such who 
drop out of the poetic race oversoon, and who have 
given to the world the smaller amount of permanent 
poetry. And it is often only when the realist turns 
romantic as did Whitman in " Out of the Cradle 

Endlessly Rocking," " Passage to India," and other 
poems, that he becomes most indubitably poetic. 



PREFACE ix 

These opinions are not expressed here without 
relation to the present volume and to the present 
position of American poetic criticism. Realism, 
and particularly the rhythmless, free-verse realism 
which has recently been given vogue in such verse 
magazinelets and anthologies as those of Miss 
Harriet Monroe and Mr. W. S. Braithwaite, seems 
to be already near to exhaustion. These critics in 
exploiting it as true poetry have quickly condemned 
their pages. And now the question is being asked, 
Were they sincere? And since they have also dis- 
criminated against or omitted certain distinguished 
poets who were doing free, independent and beau- 
tiful work, are they to be critically trusted? If 
not, to whom can one who loves genuine poetry of 
any kind go for critical guidance through the 
jungle of contemporary American poetry? 

I sought to answer the last question some years 
ago in an article to the North American Review. 
There I said that America, still literarily democratic, 
had no authoritative poetry criticism, but that by far 



X PREFACE 

the most competent and trustworthy it possessed came 
from the consensus of opinion of the better newspaper 
reviewers. That answer, I fear, must still stand. 
For the petty poetry magazines, such as those men- 
tioned, have been far too busy trying to discover new 
" movements," or in exploiting fads and favorites, 
to remember large-mindedly what poetry is. And 
of our other critical periodicals too many, at the other 
extreme, have been academically addicted to the be- 
lief that America is congenitally unpoetic, and that 
the highest praise any American may hope for is com- 
parison with a frequently inferior, if more widely 
known, foreign contemporary. To a real criticism, 
therefore, the last two decades of our poetry are still 
richly open; though it is to the credit of Miss Amy 
Lowell that she has recently sought to give an ac- 
count of the realist side of this period; and it is to 
be hoped some volume is forthcoming unrestricted 
in creed, and free of the small spites, suppressions 
and partizanships with which Miss Monroe, the 
" endowed," and Mr. Braithwaite, the unendowed, 
have so successfully impugned each other. 



PREFACE xi 

The volume offered here has been written, as have 
its predecessors, with the belief expressed above that 
the poet's attitude toward life should always be ro- 
mantic however much he may lean toward realism 
or classicism in particular poems: for the truly ro- 
mantic is ever the imaginative. Narrative poems 
have been chosen to begin and end it — poems having 
the region of the Ohio for a background, and one 
with the River itself as in some sense a protagonist. 
This arrangement has been made partly for variety's 
sake, and partly because it gives me opportunity to 
express the belief that writers of narrative verse are 
too unfamiliar with the technique of the modem short 
story. Their disposition to relate and describe a 
situation disproportionately, rather than to reveal it 
directly to a climjax; and their neglect to hold strictly 
to a definite paint of view; leaves too often such an 
impression of amateurishness as our better short 
story writers would not be guilty of. Perhaps no 
narrative poet can do better than to ask himself if 
this be true. Cale Young Rice. 

Louisville, January, 1918. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Old Garth's Jess 3 

Chanson of the Bells op Oseney 39 

The Avengers ■ 42 

Processional 50 

Revolution 52 

To a Firefly by the Sea .56 

A Wife — to a Husband Disgraced 58 

Questions 61 

Transmutation 63 

Waste . 65 

The Heart of God is I^Iy Demesne 67 

Songs to A. H. R . . . . 70 

King Amenophis 73 

Recruit 961 . 75 

The Song of the Storm-Spirits 76 

The Wreck-Buoy ' .78 

Deliverance? 80 

The Imperial City . . . . 83 

The Price . . . . . .85 

The Unborn 87 

Brother Beasts 94 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Woman Wronged 97 

To A Solitary Sea-Gull 99 

Ineffable Things 100 

Katenka's Lover 102 

A Mother 104 

Give Over, O Sea! 105 

The Nun 108 

A Rhapsodist's Song 110 

Insulation 113 

Iseult of Ireland 114 

To 116 

The Hills I Have Never Reached 118 

The Half-Breed 119 

The Ride 122 

The Faring of Fa-Hien 123 

A Lover, Deceived 127 

At the Dance 130 

Her God 132 

Danse Macabre 133 

A Norse Song 135 

Moon-Flight 136 

The Resurrection According to Thomas . . . .137 

Rose and Lotus 139 

Atavism ". 140 

Strangeness 142 

Forecast 143 

The Closed Gates 144 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

An Austrian Prisoner 146 

Easter Snow 148 

A Wood-Moment 150 

Poets There Are 152 

In Praise of Robert Browning .153 

Over the Sands 154 

evanescencies 156 

My Island 157 

Through Hue and Cry 158 

A Parable 159 

Sense-Sweetness 161 

Mother and Son 163 

Ariel to the Aging Shakespeare . . . . . .164 

Pagan 165 

Providence . . 166 

Wraith.wood Hill 16'8 



WRAITHS AND REALITIES 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 

I 

Just where the Ohio bends away 
From Coal-mine Hill and doubles back 
Between low corn-lands that display 
Their tasseled ranks in wide array, 
The city lies in a moon-curve, 
A crescent smoky at one tip. 
But at the other's sunny swerve, 
From mill and factory afar, 
Green-sheltered homes and churches are. 

The river frontage has a strip 
Of park-way here, a narrow space 
Of grass and trees where one may lip 
The cool west breeze and watch suns dip. 
3 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 
Across, the dam lies; elbowed out 
Into midstream, to turn its flow 
To wharf and warehouse built about 
The levee's cobbled slope — where tug 
And busy steamer chum and chug. 

And here old Garth was master — coarse 
In fibre as split hickory ; 
Shouting command with curse as hoarse 
As the tug-hoots, and with a force 
That beat into the ears and brain 
Of clerk and deckhand, who in fear 
Hurried about with doubled strain 
To check invoice, or lift the weight 
On streaming backs of crowded freight. 

Jess was among them — Jess, his son, 
A lad of twenty — clear of eye 
And clean of limb, just such a one 
As made you ask of earth and sun, 
Yes, of all baffling Nature, how? 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 
How have you charmed from a dull stock 
Of narrow tyramiy this brow? 
Can you at will say to the womb 
Heredity is not man's doom? 

Answer is wanting. But despite 
A parentage unbeautiful 
The lad had grown — keen to delight 
In beauty and in love, its light. 
Wherefore old Garth, dimly suspecting, 
And hating what was not himself, 
Or like himself, did no neglecting, 
But tore the boy at a young age 
Away to toil's hard tutelage. 

Away from school — from the new dreams 
That books had kindled in his eyes; 
Away from friends, and the first gleams 
Of freedom with which friendship streams. 
" Work — if you're son of mine — not spend," 
To Jess, fifteen, the churl had said. 



6 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

And there had been a wordless end; 
Upon the wharf Jess took his place, 
Renouncing all things — save one face. 

The face of Ellen Arden — young 
With all the Aprils of the world, 
And sweet with all the beauty wrung 
From flower-bells by the wind swung. 
A face that Jess had first beheld 
Coming toward him thro new throes 
Of manhood that within him swelled : 
And that was instantly the goal 
Of his imagination's soul. 

For they had met immortally. 

From the first moment when she saw 

Old Garth with hot authority 

Bum the boy's cheeks, her heart sprang free: 

Free of the difference of wealth 

And rooted rank and social sheen — 

For what are these to young love's health ? — 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 
" Your father's cruel," Ellen had said. 
For him it struck his father dead. 

For tho upon the wharf next day 
To toil with negroes he was put, 
To lifting cotton, wheat and hay 
And cane cut from the brakes of May; 
And tho he heard his father's voice 
Swing like a whip across his back, 
It had no smallest power to rout 
The bliss of knowing that her face 
Was in a world where he had place. 

Nor for years then was there a change. 
He lent his youth, unpaid, to toil. 
Nor scarcely thought of it as strange, 
Or dreamed that he might farther range. 
For Ellen was the Spring's glad green. 
And Ellen was the Autumn's gold. 
She was all things of joy between. 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 

Till once he saw her with another, 
Then a fear took him, with its smother. 

What if he lost her? — she must wed: 
And could she wed a work-f or-nothing ? 
It raised old Garth up from the dead, 
" He owes me more," said Jess, " than bread." 
It raised old Garth out of the shroud 
That Ellen — who had called him cruel — 
Had made the boy's indifference proud 
To wrap him in. " He's mean," said Jess, 
" But he shan't steal my happiness." 

Down to the wharf that night he went 
And hung lonely over the water, 
Brooding until the eve-star spent 
Her fire within the West's wide tent. 
No craft was on the current; all 
Were tied along the shore for sleep. 
Only the ripple's idle fall. 
Or the hull-rats, broke thro his sense 
Of injury and impotence. 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 
For the old man was strong, he knew, 
And a son's rights were as a slave's. 
" But I will have them — if she's true — 
More wages now — and those past due." 
He wandered home, rehearsing words, 
Those ageless actors, in his heart, 
Tho all his spirit was in curds 
Of bitterness before the fight 
To win what was his human right. 

He rose : old Garth at breakfast looked 

Him over with a scurrile eye. 

And said, " Curse you, what's got you hooked? 

You're late and I've much business booked." 

Jess flung no answer : he would wait 

And in the wharf office have it out. 

" Had I a mother to abate 

The loneliness I feel," he said. 

His mother at his birth was dead. 

He took his hat — looked in the glass: 
Would he see Ellen ? Chance so fell. 



10 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

His heart beat with a riot mass 
Of struggling raptures. . . . Would she pass, 
Would she? . . . before he reached the comer? 
He hurried, and she slowed her step, 
A kindness that seemed to adorn her 
In the boy^s eye with deity : 
He worshipped — then prayed out his plea: 

" Oh, Ellen, I was thinking of you," 
And swift he saw her face turn roses. 
" Ellen, may I not dare to love you? 
I do, more than the skies above you. 
I do, I do, tho you are rich 
And beautiful and all that's bright. 
And I could climb out of this ditch 
Of drudgery and win the world 
If you within my heart were furled. 

" My father's a mere riverman, 
Who gives me bread alone for wages, 
But that should never be a ban, 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 11 

Love a far wider gulf can span. 
I have no money, save the store 
He's stinted from me these three years, 
But he shall pay me now the more — 
For I am worth it — or I'll take 
What's mine, and wharf-dust from me shake." 

She listened — and her heart went white 
Then red again with the glad blood. 
She loved him, yet it was not quite 
The love that conquers all despite. 
And then her people — and their wrath ; 
For they would cast her off, she knew, 
Since there were riches in her path: 
The other he had seen her with 
Was one whose wealth transcended myth. 

" O Jess, I am afraid," she cried, 
" I think I love you, but my life 
In pride and wealth and place is dyed. 
And with you I should be untried. 



12 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

If you had money — and no father 
To fetter us in the world's eye! 
Wait, Jess, a little while, Yd rather." 
Then with a flutter she was gone — 
But not the dawn with her — the dawn! 

For love had spoken. So desire 
For wealth and freedom broke out in 
The boy — as might a forest fire 
That sweeps all down and will not tire. 
He hastened to the ringing wharf. 
The old man waited at the door. 
*' By Hell, do you expect to dwarf 
My business with delays like this? " 
He swore, and struck Jess with a hiss. 

Jess quivered, then said, " Come with me 

Into the office: you must hear. 

I've wormed it to your t>Tanny 

Enough: now something else must be." 

" What? '' said the old man. " Come? — I will, 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 13 

And smash your liver into sense. 
You'll learn this is no kid-glove mill. 
I know well how your lily throat 
Is strangled in a petticoat." 

They went : the door was closed behind. 

Without, the deckhands grinned and waited. 

" Ole boss, he shore eats to the rind," 

One said. " Young boss don't know his kind." 

Within, the boy, trembling as sons 

Will tremble before fathers only, 

Strained for the breath of self-control 

To say with dignity his soul. 

" I've worked three years and you have had 
Less words from me than I've had wages. 
I've toiled: for what? To see you pad 
Your purse — and add to it and add. 
And I cared not: the days were good, 
Rich with the golden hair of Ellen. 
But now I want a livelihood — 



14 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

Pay for the past — and for the wife 
I hope to win a decent life. 

" I know the trade: give me but these 

And I will double soon your gains. 

But give them not — and I will squeeze 

What's mine." . . . Old Garth smote on his knees. 

" What's yours ! " he cried. " Know this, you whelp, 

Who lift this whine that I am thieving. 

I'll give you what will be more help." 

He struck Jess and the boy went down . . . 

In long unconsciousness to drown. 

II 

When he came to it was just noon. 

He lay upon the floor and stared. 

He heard mill-whistles thro his swoon 

Of pain — like drills into him hewn. 

" Where am I? " asked he. Then came back 

The blow — and still an unseen fist 

Like a great hammer, whack on whack, 



OLD GARTH'S JESS IS 

Seemed beating with a demon din 
Upon his wounded brain — far in. 

It maddened him; till he arose 

And saw the river slipping by. 

He watched it as one does who knows 

Its beauty no more for him flows. 

He was ten million years from it : 

The artery of time was severed. 

In vain his senses strove to knit 

The world that was on yesterday 

With this earth-corpse that round him lay. 

He loathed his face — and then went out, 
Past sweaty, dinner-pailed deckhands, 
To strive and call his thoughts from rout. 
With his will's bitter broken knout. 
He leant against a cotton-bale 
And saw the muddy current pass. . . * 
And when it bore a body, stale. 



16 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

Swollen and foul with drowTimg, by, 
No difference came into his eye. 

Save that he wished he too were drowned - 
Or the old man — yes, the old man. 
And what had been so hard — to round 
His thoughts up — hate now easy found. 
It herded all wild animal 
Desires within his bleeding heart ; 
Hereditary fiercenesses 
He did not know were in his blood 
Stamped the clear stream of it to mud. 

" 111 have my money — and I'll go," 

He said, " I'll get it if Idle!" 

He left the w^harf , stem with the woe 

Of one Content no more will know. 

He stemmed the heavy cobblestones; 

The shanty-boats sent out a whiff 

Of fish fr}ung and com bread pones. 

But the sole hunger that he felt 

Was — for the stroke that must be dealt. 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 17 

He took a path thro tall ragweed 
That grew along the river edge, 
Where as a child he used to lead 
In games and many a danger deed. 
The sun-cracked clay beneath his feet 
Gaped like his broken world within, 
On which hot shame still seemed to beat. 
Even the face of Ellen now 
Was seared from sight within his brow. 

Beyond the Waterworks he stopped, 
Beside the sycamored Bayou. 
A dove in branches leafy-topped 
Her low love-note upon him dropped. 
Its softness only hardened more 
His hate and hard determination. 
How could he get what was his due — 
And then get Ellen — get her too? 

He thought until dark drew the sun 
Into its net — the day was caught. 



J8 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

And God the Fisher, having done, 
Loosed minnow stars to swim and run. 
But Jess, too, Jess had caught his fish — 
A way to get his rights. He rose. 
" She will not have another wish, 
When I have told her I must leave, 
Than to come with me, to believe." 

The blue arc-lights were sifting out 
Their carbon-sparks and settling down 
To the night's duty, as a doubt 
How to see Ellen brought Jess rout. 
He slowed his step from street to street, 
Scanning the face of each home-comer, 
And hoping one that he might meet 
Would be hers. And it was. She came — 
Twilit — but in her eyes love's flame. 

" Jess! " — " Ellen! " — " Jess! " — " Oh, is it 

you?" 
He felt in his her little hand, 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 19 

As if around his heart it grew; 
Yet his words shook her, like death-dew. 
" What is it, Jess? " With low alarm 
And love her young girl's voice trembled. 
" I have been done a dreadful harm, 
And I must go away — or kill. 
Go with me, Ellen ! say you will." 

" Oh Jess, what is it? " — " Do not ask. 
To tell you now would strangle me. 
And I have still a bitter task 
To do, and there's no time to bask. 
But you shall hear, upon the train, 
All, when forever we are wedded. 
For that alone will keep me sane. 
Oh Ellen, if you do not come. 
Then life has added my last sum." 

" I will," she said, " I will, dear Jess, 
Forgetting and forsaking all. 
At your great misery I but guess : 



20 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

God let me drain it of distress. 
For now I know father and mother 
And home and swathing luxury 
Can never from this moment smother 
My heart from saying with each beat 
That you alone can make life sweet." 

He seized her to him, then said, " Go: 
At twelve be ready: I will come." 
Then as an arrow from the bow 
Of destiny he sped — to woe. 
He reached the levee; saw the moon 
Like the thin rind of a new world; 
A silvery promise of the boon 
Of finding in some new-won place 
Relief from his hot harsh disgrace. 

But first the money must be netted, 
" All that is mine " — he said, and slipped 
Down to the wharf that waves wetted 
A little, by the sharp wind fretted. 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 21 

The door gave to his key : the smell 
Of dark-stowed freight struck on his sense. 
But in the darkness he could tell 
His way; and soon the office latch 
Clicked — and he scraped sight from a match. 

The safe stood in the corner — by 
The desk old Garth was wont to use. 
The name upon it met his eye 
As might a ghost he must defy. 
But he remembered the foul blow 
Which had been flung against his brow 
A few hours since, and saw the flow 
Of dry blood on the floor. Dark hate 
Rose in him like a flood of fate. 

Quickly he lit a candle — knelt .... 
But what was that? .... Nothing .... He lis- 
tened. 
The moon fleeced with a silvery pelt 
The river's flow — or seemed to melt, 



22 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

Then came again, so hauntingly 
That life was much too beautiful 
For money thus to bow his knee .... 
But ere he knew the tumblers fell : 
The combination answered well. 

Then his hands found the money — bill 

On bill he thrust into his coat ; 

His wages — yet upon his will 

They weighed with fear he could not kill. 

A sound once more — he started .... Was 

It but the scuttle of a rat? 

A breathing of God's broken laws ? 

He knew not as he took one more — 

Then saw old Garth stand in the door. 



in 

He did not rise, till he had led 
The safe-lock into place, slowly. 
Then something told him he was dead 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 23 

He or that other — whose blear head, 
With blood-shot raging shaggy eyes 
Now held him in a brutal grip: 
For death before itself oft flies 
In premonition .... When he rose 
He felt his hand on something close. 

It was a leaden paper-weight 

Upon the desk. — Old Garth now rasped, 

" A thief, by God: and I this late 

In knowing it." The words were fate. 

" If you say that I'll kill you." Jess 

Was strangled, with the lying truth. 

" I take what's mine — no more, no less." — 

" You'll take the road to jail, you bastard, 

And learn how such as you are mastered." 

The words went thro the boy. He thought, 
" Am I a bastard? "... Then, " I'm lost! 
He'll see me sentenced ! I am caught. 
O mother !".... then his senses fought. 



24 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

The moon died as a moment passed, 
The river rippled, a black blot. 
Old Garth within the door was massed. 
" Stand back," cried Jess, " and let me go." 
He saw the shape move toward him slow. 

And then he felt within his hand 

The weight — how cold it was — like death. 

But terror gave him the command : 

He seized and flung it as a brand. 

For all things suddenly were flame 

Before his eyes .... Above the heart 

Of the old man with awful aim 

It struck — and down his victim sank . . . . 

A gust of wind the candle drank. 

Yet in the horror of the dark 
Jess stood there, waiting for a blow, 
A curse — death even, cold and stark, 
To make of him a sudden mark. 
It fell not, but the creeping night 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 25 

Became an infinite accusal 
That pressed upon him — till in fright 
He stumbled toward* the door — and felt 
A lump there at his feet. He knelt. 

There was no beat of heart or pulse. 

Clairvoyantly Jess saw the face, 

As one sees under waters dulse. 

Why did it not rage out insults? 

" He can't be dead," Jess cried, " he can't! " 

But who intentless ever slew 

And did not that same anguish pant? 

We kill and then would die to see 

Breath where breath never more can be. 

A moan wrung Jess. He shook and rose, 
Sought for the candle, gave it flame. 
The room came out of the night's throes — 
But as a witness, now, that knows. 
What should he do? He saw gleaming 
Along the floor the deadly weight. 



26 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

And then .... "Heart failure! " came streaming 

Into his thought. "I'll leave him so, 

And none .... no one can ever know." 

But first the weight. It must be placed 

Back on the desk; and yet he shrank: 

It was as if his fingers faced 

Lifting the dead man's heart .... Yet haste, 

Hasten he must. So from the floor 

He seized it up. Then with his hand 

Crushed out the light, and to the door, 

Across the unabusive dead. 

Hurried with trembling haunted tread. 

The river dreamed, the stars shone, 
The cool wind with the night trysted. 
But in the world Jess was alone 
As all who kill are : God seemed stone. 
Or was there any God in Heaven? 
The gulfs above him and within 
Seemed destitute of kindly Leaven : 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 27 

Only for misery and doom 
Did the wide universe have room. 

He would have run, he would have fled, 
But knew he must not. He must go 
Quietly home and to his bed. 
And there lie in the arms of Dread. 
But word to Ellen must be sent 
That he was ill. For well he knew 
That fever with its parching breath 
Would dry in him for long the dew 
Of health — nor scarcely give him time 
To shape concealment of his crime. 

IV 

The sun rose with a heat that meant 
A thirsty day for straining labor. 
Yet, ere the hour, and singing went 
The deckhands, children of Content. 
They waited at the blind wharf-door. 
" Ole boss late? No-sir-ree! Ole sun 



28 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

Hisself's got up too early, shore." 
They said, and watched the river foam. 
The foreman sought old Garth at home. 

He found Jess — in delirium. 

The servant and a doctor near. 

" Old Garth? " He was not in his room. 

The bed untouched: that was the sum. 

Back to the wharf the foreman hurried, 

Scattered the idlers, tried the door. 

It gave . . . past him the cat scurried. 

Mewing with fear. . . . The wharfman lay 

As tranquil as all dead men may. 

The inquest came; — the long slow tread 
Of hearse and carriage to the place 
Where dead men do not rail, being dead; 
Where for the worst a prayer is read. 
" His violence was apoplectic 
And the heart failed," the verdict ran. 
Jess, fevered, incoherent, hectic. 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 29 

Picked flowers in delirium 
For Ellen — adding sum to sum. 

And Ellen, thro forbiddance breaking, 
Trampling entreaty and command, 
Into her hands her young life taking, 
Sat by him in his sleep or waking. 
" Yes, Jess," she said to the poor brain 
That blindly, blindly added blossoms, — 
Each to her heart a joy, a pain, — 
" Yes, dear, but sleep a little now — 
For it is Ellen wipes your brow." 

Oh, would he live? For weeks the wing 
Of death hung shadowy at his heart, 
Ready with silent winnowing 
To beat — and leave there but a thing. 
But Ellen held it back with hope 
And tender courage and desire: 
Not while one feeble ray could grope 
Thro the dark pinion would she yield : 
So nurse and doctor, too, were steeled. 



.30 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

Then one day, when an Autumn leaf, 
The first, fell drifting to the street, 
And Ellen like a shade of grief 
Stood at the window, came relief. 
Jess woke. The window glimmered there, 
Ellen within it like a dream 
That soon would vanish — leaving air 
Tortured again, he knew, with all 
The fever things that creep and crawl. 

And so he did not dare to speak. 

But waited, while the sunset flared 

And lit her with a golden streak 

Of glory — then he murmured, weak, 

" Ellen! "... She turned and saw his eyes 

Clear of the turbid wandering. 

Then thro her tears and tearful cries 

Of swift thanksgiving, on her knees 

Beside him poured her ecstasies. 

" You have come back! you have come back! 
Oh Jess, I thought you never would ! " 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 31 

Then she remembered his long lack 
Of rest — and calmed her blissful rack. 
He was content to gaze at her 
And wonder if he were not dead 
And she a radiant minister. 
He slept the night thro and at dawn 
Awoke — and still she was not gone. 

" But what has happened? " was his thought 
Always, in the blest hours that followed. 
He had been ill, he knew, distraught: 
But that forgetfulness had caught 
Away, to some dark oubliette 
Of memory, his piteous crime. 
He did not know : nor question yet 
Wherefore his father did not come: 
About his father all was numb. 

But he must ask. And so one day: 
" Where is my father? " And his eyes 
Wandered to Ellen's — where they lay 



32 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

In a deep trust, as but love's may. 
Ready was she with answer, " Jess, 
We may be married now — there's none 
Who will forbid it, no, not one. 
Your father, dear, — your father's dead. 
And mine of shame must let us wed." 

His father dead ? Why did the thought 
Seem to him like a thing exhumed 
From his own brain — not gently caught 
From Ellen's lips with low love fraught ? 
And why could he not tear away 
The shroud of strange forgetfulness 
That darkly round the hours lay 
Ere he was ill? — " I'm glad," he said, 
" I'm glad, Ellen, that we may wed." 

She laughed at his weak joylessness. 
" But hear," she cried, " how rapturous 
My lover is ! I must be less 
Securely his — or sip distress! 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 33 

He'll wed me out of gratitude 
To pay ray nursing of him next! " 
But when she saw a tragic brood 
Of troubles haunting still his eye, 
She said, " Nay, sleep, dear " — and sat by. 

His strength grew — and one day he rose. 
Then came the wedding, quietly. 
But still within him there were foes 
He hid from Ellen . . . shadowy woes. 
" Do not ! do not ! " they seemed to moan, 
Tho why they should forbid his bliss 
He could not tell. Yet thrice alone 
He seemed when Ellen was his wife — 
And there before him lay all life. 

About the honeymoon they hung. 
Those shadowy woes; and anxiously 
Ellen had watched him — sometimes stung 
With fear lest love was from him wrung. 
" All will be well,'' he said, " let us 



34 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

Go home, and work will make me whole." 
Then he would kiss her tremulous, 
And think, *' What is it calling me? 
Will nothing ease this mystery? " 

They went — and their first night was glad 

With hope — for she was in his house : 

His now, with all old Garth had had : 

His . . . yet a thought came to him, mad. 

He longed to flee it secretly, 

To let all go — rise from her side 

And run as from some destiny. 

But could he from a horror run 

That had no name, no shape — was none? 

He rose — and tried to sing. With work 
Untroubled veins would come again. 
" Goodbye, dear." In the words no lurk 
Of presage pierced him with its dirk. 
Soon was the wharf in sight; the river 
Rippled around it silvery. 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 35 

Was it the cold wind made him shiver? 
He forced his feet; and soon the greeting 
Of many rugged hands was meeting. 

Then with the foreman's orders given, 
He turned to mount toward the office 
Whither he had been driven, driven, 
By the thing hid in him, unshriven. 
Passing the window he beheld 
A child upon the deck below. 
A wish to speak to it upwelled. 
But he went on — on, thro the door, 
Across the bloodstain on the floor. 

Then on the desk he saw the weight. 
It stopped his feet — and shuddering 
As in a strained hypnotic state 
He was drawn backward by his fate. 
He gazed as one who in a beryl 
Calls up the ghosts of dead events 
Despite the prescience of their peril 



36 OLD G.\RTH'S JESS 

Compelled — by something in his brain. 
Then memory swept thro him plain. 

The weight again was in his hand . . . 
He saw his father's blood-lit eyes . . . 
He flung it, at his fear's demand . . . 
The night was lit as by a brand. 
Then came the darkness and the stumbling 
Toward the dead thing upon the floor. 
Anguish then, and the fever's rumbling, 
Telling him ever thro its blur 
He was his father's murderer. 

" O God," he moaned, " what shall I do! " 
And gazed unseeing on the river — 
Which was not with him yet quite thro — 
" What have I brought love's beauty to? " 
He moaned again, then to his feet 
Sprang with his hands locked on his breast, 
And, as one who transcends defeat, 
Tho he must die, said tearful, " Yes . . . 
I must confess. I — will confess." 



OLD GARTH'S JESS 37 

He started to the door, aware, 
Or half aware, of stir below. 
He staggered blindly down the stair. 
Who called his name — what happened there? 
The deckhands huddled on the edge 
Of the chill wharf were in commotion. 
"He's sunk . . . run! . . . ketch him! ... git 

the dredge! " 
They cried — and in the water Jess 
Saw a child's face in drowning stress. 

Jess knew no more than that he slipped, 

As down into the icy flood 

He plunged, and that his limbs were gripped 

By cramps that from him all strength stripped. 

The child beside him sank, then he 

Sank too, once, twice — how cold, how cold 

Was the brown water's mastery. 

He thought of Ellen — saw her face, 

And then was nowhere, in no place. 



38 OLD GARTH'S JESS 

V 

They drew him — and the child — found near 

Together — out upon the shore. 

Ellen, whose heart would be his bier 

Forever, came without a tear. 

He for another died ? Then grief 

Unworthy of him should not rend 

Cries from her — but sublime belief 

In the great glory of her God 

She wrung from each slow- falling clod. 

So, the years pass. And crescentwise 
The city grows; while sire and son 
Still by the river's fall and rise 
Fight the old fight that never dies. 
For between young and old the hill 
Of life rises and neither sees 
More than the way, unmastered still, 

That must be gone And so the woes 

Of wanton time still round them close. 



CHANSON OF THE BELLS OF OSENEY 

{ISth Century) 

The bells of Oseney 
(Hautclere, Doucement, Austyn) 
Chant sweetly every day, 
And sadly, for our sin. 
The bells of Oseney 
(John, Gabriel, Marie) 
Chant lowly, 

Chant slowly, 
Chant wistfully and holy 
Of Christ, our Paladin. 

Hautclere chants to the East 
(His tongue is silvery high). 
And Austyn like a priest 
39 



40 CHANSON OF THE BELLS OF OSENEY 
Sends west a weighty cry. 
But Doucement set between 
(Like an appeasive nun) 
Chants cheerly, 

Chants clearly, 
As if Christ heard her nearly, 
A plea to every sky. 

A plea that John takes up 
(He is the evangelist) 
Till Gabriel's angel cup 
Pours sound to sun or mist. 
And last of all Marie 
(The \argin-voice of God) 
Peals purely. 

Demurely, 
And with a tone so surely 
Divine, that all must hear. 

The bells of Oseney 
(Doucement, Austyn, Hautclere) 



CHANSON OF THE BELLS OF OSENEY 41 
Pour ever day by day 
Their peals on the rapt air; 
And with their mellow mates 
(John, Gabriel, Marie) 
Tell slowly, 

Tell lowly. 
Of Christ the High and Holy, 
Who makes the whole world fair. 



THE AVENGERS 
(An Interlude) 

[A road in Belgium, desolate as only night, destruc- 
tion and the cruelty of men can make it Three 
unearthly forms seem gathered together on it — 
the ghosts of a Belgian child who has starved, of 
a French woman who was raped, and of a slain 
German soldier. They are hand in hand and 
have paused helplessly, as if so recently dead as 
to be uncertain of their state. Beyond them are 
impalpahly felt the ruins of a church, a windmill, 
and a house or two. Farther down the road an 
unreal light seems to shine from some door or 
window. 

The child is whimpering. The woman peers anx- 
iously. The soldier looks hopelessly on the 

42 



THE AVENGERS 43 

ground. All are like shapes in a dream. 
The Child. My mother — did my mother starve 
too? 
I want her! ... Is this Heaven? 
The Soldier. No, little one. 

I do not think so; for it seems so dark. 
And yet I do not know : perhaps it is. 

The Woman. It is not. We are lost. Or it may be 
There are so many dead the gates that lead 
To the other world are thronged and we must wait. 
Or it may be that God — if still He cares — 
Has yet some earth-aim for us. 

The Soldier. It may be . . . 

So many things may be. And yet it seems 
That the aims of God are too like those of men. 
My Emperor avowed it was God's will 
That I should leave my wife and little children 
To take up arms and kill. 

The Woman. Yes, kill and ravish, 

Until we kill ourselves — as I have done. 



44 THE AVENGERS 

The Soldier. No, no: not that. I had a wife I 

loved. 
The Child [again whimpering]. My mother loved 
me. Is it far to Heaven? 
Why did God let me starve? 
The Soldier [shudders]. Hush, little one. 
The Child. But why? 

The Woman. For this: to feed the German 
Emperor. 
Who might have starved for glory, had you eaten. 
The Soldier. Ah that is terrible. Do not say 
that. 
We are dead now, and truth alone is left. 
The Child. I did not want to starve. Why did 

God let me ? 
The Soldier. We must go on. Perhaps we shall 
find out. 
That light may lead us to the gate we seek 
Out of the world : for surely one is near. 
The Woman. I think we are kept here for some 
avenging. 



THE AVENGERS 45 

The Soldier. Must even the dead avenge? God 
should not ask me 
To kill again ! I can not ! 
The Woman. Come: let's on. 

[Leads] . 
The Cheld. I could walk better if I did not hun- 
ger. 
Will there be bread in Heaven? plenty of bread? 
[A Shape in the gloom before them stays the 
answer. It is that of a German Sentinel. 
They halt helplessly.] 
The Soldier [who shrinks]. We cannot pass. 

We have no countersign. 
The Woman. The dead need none. See, he is 
unaware. 
To him we are invisible and soundless. 
We can be known, I think, only by those 
For whom we are kept here. Come. 
The Child [as they pass]. I am afraid. 

Will any take our bread from us in Heaven ? 
The Soldier. No, little one. Ah! . . . [stops 



46 THE AVENGERS 

by sentinel]. It is my brother, Gustav. 
He is with the Emperor — in the Emperor's guard. 
The Woman. That light, then, is within the 
Emperor's quarters. 
And now — at last ! — I seem to understand. 
[The scene darkens, as she speaks, and then is 
slowly transformed. It becomes a dim-lit room 
in which is the Emperor. He sits at a table, 
but, starting, cries out as the Three appear spec- 
tral before him: cries, and his sword falls clang- 
ing.] 
[An officer enters.] 
The Officer. You called me, sire. 
The Emperor [still staring]. No, no. I did 

not call. 

[The Three have faded.] 
The Officer [surprised] . Then, sire, goodnight 

again. 
The Emperor. Goodnight . . . goodnight. 

[With more terror, however, when the Officer 
has retired.] 



THE AVENGERS 47 

Am I distempered, still? I thought I saw them. 
Will the Almighty never ease my eyes 
With angels or archangels? but send ever 
These dead, with their undying misery? 
Is He not with me. His divinely chosen, 
With me to give my armies victory? 
[Then trembling as the Three again appear.] 
Once more you come? Begone. What do you 
seek? 

[They gaze at him.] 
The Woman. You raped me, sire. 
The Emperor [hoarsely]. Not you nor any. Away! 
The Woman. You raped me — and raped France. 
The Emperor. Lies! it is lies! 

[Half strangles.] 
The Soldier. No, sire; but truth. For I was 
made to do it : 
I and my German comrades. 
The Emperor. Traitor! Traitor! 
Your Fatherland was ringed by enemies. 

[Tries to rise.] 



48 THE AVENGERS 

The Child [to the Woman] . That is the man who 
took away my bread, 
And let me starve. 

The Emperor. No; it was War did it! 
Take her away! 

The Woman. Yes, sire; but there will come 
Others and yet others who are dying, 
And who are dead, on every hour of the night — 
Starved and ravished, murdered and slaughtered 

others. 
For you shall never again look on the living 
But there shall be about you, ever escapeless, 
The pale, piteous and accusing presence 
Of the unnumbered dead. . . . 

The Emperor. Help! . . . Help! 

[He has swooned — his head falling forward 
upon the table.] 

The Woman. Now we can find the gate out of 
the world. 
[They pass slowly thro the walls again hand in 



THE AVENGERS 49 

hand. The scene darkens and once more 
becomes the desolate road — with only the wind 
now sighing along the waste.'\ 



PROCESSIONAL 
(April 6, 1917) 

Not for a flaunted flag, O God, 

Not for affronted power, 
Not for a scurrile hope of gain, 

Not for the pride of an hour, 
Not for vengeance, hot in the heart. 

Now do we swing to war! 
Not for a weak mistrust lest peace 

Is a shame strong men abhor. 
Not for glory — for oh, to kill 

Should be a sacred wrath : 
Not for these ! but to war on war 

And sweep it from earth's path 1 

Patient has been our creed, till now, 
Patient, too, our hope, 
50 



PROCESSIONAL 51 

Patient for long our loathful deed, 

For the just in doubt must grope. 
But with a foe at last arrayed 

Against the whole world's right, 
You, O soul of the universe. 

Your very self must fight/ 
You yourself; so but one prayer 

Need we to lift — but one, 
That by our battle shall all war 

Be utterly undone. 



REVOLUTION 

(Russia risen: Germany bound) 

The spell is broken! 

The evil centuries drop away like sleep ! 

Freedom has spoken! 

And by that token 

The gyves of tyranny that trenched so deep, 

And ate into the flesh and soul of a nation 

Till gangrenous damnation 

Seemed running leprous thro it, 

Are rent, are rent away, in a swift hour. 

With wild power, 

By the millions who so long were made to rue it ! 

The spell is rent! 

From the Arctic to the Caspian, in twain! 

52 



REVOLUTION 53 

And from the Prison Plain 
Of stark Siberia to the Baltic Main ! 
And now, O Earth, a free host shall be pressed. 
As in the West, 

Against Autocracy at last shut lean, 
From all wide Europe else, into one land — 
Where it shall starve and bleed and starve and die, 
Unless along its veins too leaps that cry 
For SELF-RULE — which alone God will let stand ! 

And shall that cry not come? 

Shall Russia rise, 

Russia a serf under her sterile skies, 

And on her starven steppes, 

Yet not Kultur-d,ccla,iming Kaiserdom? 

Shall the untutored peasant seize the dream 

Of liberty, once more thro the world astream, 

While that great Race, — 

Whose reckonings in many a darkest place 

Of the dead Past 

Might well have swept its spirit, first not last, 



54 REVOLUTION 

To the Democratic Day, — 

Fails to surge up, at the Future^s trumpet-blast? 

No, people of the Rhine I 

Who have freed Music, brought it from the deeps 

Of the heart's prison chambers; 

Who have freed Thought — that now no more 

remembers 
Its one time fear to face the Universe; 
Who have freed God — opened the Church Door, 
That would have held Him shut within a Creed, 
Until He now may speak, to any need, 
Thro Book or star, 
Or the star-shivering sea — 
No, no ! Rise up in your humanity. 
And set yourselves free! 
And war no more save for an end to War ! 

Rise and say to your Foes, 

" We want no mastery save of the world's woes ! " 

Out of the hurricane tides of blood-madness 



REVOLUTION 55 

Lift such a flag 

Of arbitrage that all your cruel brag 
And frenzied might shall be forgot in praise — 
And not endow with sadness 
Your sons' sons, and be their bitter drag ! 
Rise and say, " Join us. All have sinned. 
Let us no longer reap the dire whirlwind. 
For peace is the price neither of bravery 
Nor cowardice — but of the will to see 
That the earth is all men's — all. 
And so, can so be kept 

Only when nations from their shrines have swept, 
At a world-call, 
That loud self-worship. Nationality! " 



TO A FIREFLY BY THE SEA 

Little torch-bearer, alone with me in the night, 
You cannot light the sea, nor I illumine life. 
They are too vast for us, they are too deep for us. 
We glow with all our strength, but back the shadows 

sweep : 
And after a while will come unshadowed Sleep. 

Here on the rocks that take the turning tide; 

Here by the wide lone waves and lonelier wastes of 

sky, 
We keep our poet-watch, as patient poets should, 
Questioning earth's commingled ill and good to us. 
Yet little of them, or naught, have truly understood. 

Bright are the stars, and constellated thick. 
To you, so quick to flit along your flickering course, 

56 



TO A FIREFLY BY THE SEA 57 

They seem perhaps as glowing mates in other fields. 
And all the knowledge I have gathered yields to me 
Scarce more of the great mystery their wonder wields. 

For the moon we are waiting — and behold 

Her ardent gold drifts up, her sail has caught the 

breeze 
That blows all being thro the Universe always. 
So now, little light-keeper, you no more need nurse 
Your gleam, for lo! she mounts, and sullen clouds 

disperse. 

And I with aching thought may cease to burn, 
And humbly turn to rest — knowing no glow of mine 
Can ever be so beauteous as have been to me 
Your soft beams here beside the sea*s elusive din : 
For grief too oft has kindled me, and pain, and the 
world's sin. 



A WIFE — TO A HUSBAND DISGRACED 

I 

I could see you die, dear, 

Since your shame is such; 
Die — and let dying clear 

The cloud of it away. 
Little was it that you did. 

Yet so overmuch 
That all cruel hands now 

At your heart may clutch, 
And all tongues of bitterness betray. 

II 
I could see you die — yes, 
For so proud you were, 
You! that no glory less 
Than self-respect can serve 
58 



A WIFE 59 

Still to keep your head high 

Above the slime and slur, 
The laughter, the contumely, 

That fallen men incur : 
And but death can still the broken nerve. 

Ill 

For you cannot win back, 

Hope of that is shut; 
Falls there are that seem to lack 

The footway up again; 
Seem to leave the foiled heart 

With every fibre cut: 
Little was the way down 

But soul-deep the rut: 
Like infinity its inches pen. 

IV 

So your petty self-fall 

May be measureless. 
Oft we cannot tell at all 

If the end is wreck. 



60 A WIFE 

Foes may drive us down a brink 

And we but address 
Mind and soul to mount again 

Out of all distress: 
But self-fallen we are at fate's beck. 

V 
I could see you die, then, 

Die — for, as of old, 
Love is not a stay to you 

Now that honor's gone. 
To a wife the stings of shame 

Are naught if she be told, 
Still, that she is dearer than 

All dreams the sky can hold : 
Would, oh would you too could so live on ! 



QUESTIONS 

What shall I do when blows blind me? 
How fare on when counsels cross? 
Where shall I turn when life behind me 
Seems but a course run at a loss? 
Thro what throes shall I beat to windward, 
Uncontent with a lesser port ? 
Whom shall I trust when Heaven of me, 
Heaven itself, seems making sport ? 

How shall I answer a knave's rating, 
Done in a liar's arithmetic ? 
What shall I say to a fool's prating, 
In destructiveness as quick? 
How shall I meet a friend's treason, 
When it has scuttled the good ship Faith ? 
61 



62 QUESTIONS 

Whose are the stars if wide disaster 
As its will can do me scath ? 

Answer there is — a brief order, 
" Bear all blows and yet be free; 
Let no bitterness set a border 
To your will, no treachery. 
Speak — if you are the bigger for it, 
Keep the silence if you are less, 
And if the stars indeed be Godless, 
Steer still by their godliness." 



TRANSMUTATION 

It is Just a common bell, in a dull and dirty cupola, 

But somehow I am off across the seas, 
To a little town in Italy, a church in sunny Italy, 

Beneath calm silvery olive trees. 
And a lake is lapping by, lap-lapping at the fisher 
boats, 
And mountain peaks are lifting snowy mitres to 
the breeze. 
And a mass is being said, and a prayer is in a hun- 
dred throats — 
Soft, and asway with mysteries. 
And I'm one with the murmur of the aves and I 
cross myself 
And dip my hand in holy water too; 
And I kneel, at every station of the Passion; then 
toss myself 

63 



64 TRANSMUTATION 

Down, by the altar, with the True. 
It is just a coninion bell, in a dirty little cupola — 

But campaniles rise into the sky, 
And a simple God is mine again, a God all divine 
again. 

Till ... I remember, with a sighl 



WASTE 

I flung a wild rose into the sea, 

I know not why. 
For swinging there on a rathe rose-tree, 
By the scented bay and barberry, 
Its petals gave all their sweet to me. 

As I passed by. 

And yet I flung it into the tide. 

And went my way. 
I climbed the gray rocks, far and wide, 
And many a cove of peace I tried, 
With none of them all to be satisfied. 

The whole long day. 

For I had wasted a beautiful thing, 
Which might have won 
65 



66 WASTE 

Each passing heart to pause and sing, 
On the sea-path there, of its blossoming. 
And who wastes beauty shall feel want's sting, 
As I had done. 



THE HEART OF GOD IS MY DEMESNE 

The heart of God is my demesne, 

I wander there all day, 

With the winds of hope. 

And the winds of joy, 

And the winds of fear at play. 

I feel the sunsets of His worlds, 

And the dawns, come and go there; 

I hear the surging of His seas, 

And all desires that flow there. 

I sense the rhythm of His years 

Like waters ever falling; 

Their music sometimes is as tears 

Or prayer-voices calling; 

I breathe all beauty, and the clouds 

Of sorrow that sweep thro it, 

67 



68 THE HEART OF GOD IS MY DEMESNE 

Or horrors that in sickening shrouds 

Drift, dumb, into it. 

The vast pulse of the Universe 

Is there forever beating, 

Time-that's-past and Time-to-come 

Meeting, melting, fleeting. 

The heart of God is my demesne, 

For what is it but Life ? 

But a wonder-place 

Where a child laughs. 

Or a million fall in strife ! 

But a blest place — or a curst place 

I call on death to swallow, 

Nor let another from the womb 

Of wanton Being follow ! 

But a place that once wandered in 

I cannot cease from wanting. 

Or trusting, tho its way has been 

Woe-bestrewn or daunting. 

A place to bide, with earth and star, 



THE HEART OF GOD IS MY DEMESNE 69 
Created yet creating, 
At peace sometimes or at wild war, 
Fated — yet ever fating. 
The heart of God is my demesne. 
For what is it but Life? 
The heart of me is God's demesne, 
I help Him win the strife. 



SONGS TO A. H. R. 

I 

THE HEART'S QUESTION 

Is it such a little thing 

To find a wind-flower 
Twinkling in the wild-wood 

Hour after hour, 
Dancing to the wind's pipe 

With a happy nod? 
Is it such a little thing? 

I think it is God. 

Is it such a little thing 
To find the young moon 

Flitting thro the tree boughs 
In her silver shoon, 
70 



SONGS TO A. H. R. 71 

Seeking for the wind-flower 

There along the sod ? 
Is it such a little thing ? 

I think it is God. 

Is it such a little thing 

To find in your face 
Something of the wind-flower 

And young moon's grace? 
Something of the wild-wood, 

Ever faery-trod? 
Is it such a little thing? 

I think it is God. 

n 

FIRST AND LAST 

Night has uttered a star, 

A first faint word 

Of her epic to follow. 
Night has uttered a star; 



72 SONGS TO A. H. R. 

It hangs in the dusk's high hollow. 
Night has uttered a star; 
As you, immutably dear to me, 
First uttered the word that brought my heart 
Starry infinity. 

Night has ended her lay, 
Her epic lay 
Of heavenly burning. 
Night has ended her lay, 
And the dawn wind is returning. 
Night has ended her lay ; 
But starriest murmurs of your love 
Thro all my being's breadth, I know, 
Can never cease to move. 



KING AMENOPHIS 

(A screed for deported Belgians) 

King Amenophis built him a tomb, 
Down in the desert's sandy womb, 
Where he might lie, with a slave or two. 
To spare him labors the dead must do, 
King Amenophis! 

Yes; he built it cunningly deep 
And secret, safe from the Nile's sure seep. 
But time, sifting, came to rot him, 
And the tomb-robbers at last got him. 
King Amenophis! 

So I am sure you pity him, friends; 
For no slave of his myriad bends 
73 



74 KING AMENOPHIS 

Over him now — but whoso lists 
Of idlers or archeologists — 

King Amenophis! 

Surely you pity him ! For great kings 
Who slay and enslave are sacred things. 
And, ... if any today are left, 
Surely they should not be bereft 

Like King Amenophis! 



RECRUIT 961 

I will go over the sea's anesthetic, 
To the field of Flanders, 
And ask a surgeon bullet to slit my heart 
And let this passion out. 
For I love two women. 
Each beautiful as the other. 
And one, if I live, will cruelly ache and suffer 
With want of me, even as I of her. 
While one, if I die, will think of me as faithful, 
True as the earth is to the moon's turning. 
I will go over the sea's anesthetic 
To Surgeon Death, who serves on the field of Flan- 
ders. 



75 



THE SONG OF THE STORM-SPIRITS 

Come over the tide, 
Come over the foam, 
Dance on the hurricane, leap its waves, 
Dream not of the calm sea-caves 
Nor of content in them and home. 
For that is the reason the hearts of men 
Are ever v^eary — they would abide 
Somewhere out of the spumy stride 
Of the world's spindrift — a want denied. 
That is the reason : tho they know 
That the restive years have no true home, 
But only a Whither, a Whence and When — 
Then, . . . when the tide has turned again, 
Whence and Whither, for hearts to roam. 
And who would stay but a little while. 
Not dance as we, and sing on the wind, 

76 



THE SONG OF THE STORM-SPIRITS 77 

Against the whole flow of the world has sinned, 
And soon is weary and cannot smile. 
Dance then, dance, on the fleeting spray ! 
None can gather eternity 
Into his heart and bid it stay. 
Swiftly again it slips away. 
Dance, and know that the will of Life 
Is the wind's will and the will of the tide, 
And who finds not a home in its strife 
Shall find no home on any side ! 



THE WRECK-BUOY 

(A wife speaks) 

They praise my courage and put me here 
By a ribald wreck and say, " My dear, 

Still guard us from this poor hulk- 
He's battered, we know, and gone to the bad. 
His chart is lost and the sails he had, 
His rudder is gone, his heart is crazed 
With the wind — and the tide when the wind's 
raised, 

And horrors thro him skulk." 

They praise me, yes, and bid me bide, 
Anchored here, on the channel side, 

Where the living ships go by; 
Anchored here, by a debauchee, 

78 



THE WRECK-BUOY 79 

A derelict of the fair free sea; 
Where never a word of the world I hear, 
Port news, from afar or near, 
But only his maundering in my ear, 
With sotted boast or sigh. 

And I'm weary of it — of listening 
To the loose log of his voyaging 

In the days of his desire. 
I'm weary of hearing him strangle and cough 
And hush when the tide of life draws off : 
And I do not care what you may think, 
I'm glad when I see him sink and sink, 
And gladder I'll be when the sea shall drink 

Him down to utter mire. 



DELIVERANCE? 

{At the moment of the Russian Revolution) 

" Give up your dead," the cry came, to prison and 

mine and quarry, 
" Give up your living dead to life again! " 
And all Siberia lying under a night numbly starry, 
Awoke out of her sleep — 
Awoke as at the Spring-thaw — 
And quivered, and was delivered of a hundred thou- 
sand men! 

Out of her wombs of torture, grief, and goaded deg- 
radation, 

Out of her fields of exile and despair. 

They came — those who had dreamed the dreams of 
freedom for a nation: 
80 



DELIVERANCE? 81 

Those who had dared to speak, 
Timid or brave or blood-wild, 
Of a new birth, a new earth, a Russia risen fair. 

The young came — old with the mar and misery of 

waiting ; 
The old came, withered and bent and dumb; 
Broken of mind, broken of heart — broken of all but 
hating ; 

Back to love of the sun, 
To hope so long undone, 
Or hope of hope in the better days of healing years 
to come. 

The pity of it, the glory! oh the partings and the 

meetings ! 
Russia again is reached across their woes! 
Kisses are given, with the pangs of long-forgot 
heart-beatings : 

Wherein words fail 
To tell the horror's tale — 
Or tell it over and over, without peace, to its close. 



82 DELIVERANCE? 

Never was such a birth — of the dead back to the 

living. — 
O Freedom, midwife of the world's desire, 
Be with all lands that need you, in their hours of 
birth-giving : 

And lend deliverance, 
As great against mischance. 
To every noble issue Pity and Progress seek to sire. 



THE IMPERIAL CITY 

(Pekin) 

Water, under white bridges, lilied water, under the 
marble. Still; with the heavens in it. ... A 
bird's warble. 

Green limbs drifting A stork out of the shal- 
lows, under the arches, suddenly lifting. 

Over the roofs blue-tiled, where I am wending, over 
she soars. ... A mandarin by me talks of 
Emperors. 

Steps up to a shrine, under a pine. . . . Strange 
heaven-beasts guarding it, dogs divine. 

I slip a little by one . . . there is a stain. ** The 
blood of China," I think, "The blood of 
China! " and sicken with pain. 
83 



84 THE IMPERIAL CITY 

I turn: the beauty is gone: tyranny left. ... I 

have been feeding my senses where starved 

millions were bereft. 

But I remember, a new banner now waves. . . . No 
more is this a changeless land of Emperors and 
slaves. 



THE PRICE 

Violets under the may-apple, 

Bluets dancing blue, 

And nakedly leaping sun-dapple, 

All the wood thro. 

Feel no blight of the world's blood 

A-flow now in France. 

And I would the piteous drip of it, 

The ache of it and grip of it. 

Might, for only a little while. 

Leave my heart too ! 

For, I am weary of thinking, 
And knowing thought is vain. 
Better is any sinking 
Than under the world's pain. 
God of the distant star-deeps, 
85 



86 THE PRICE 

The centuries to come 
May shape, out of our sufferings, 
A peace that shall no more take wings, 
But oh the beauty broken now 
To gather that far gain ! 



THE UNBORN 

(A Phantasy) 

[ The place of the unborn, in a part of the earth from 
which the Immanent God seems for the moment 
strangely withdrawn. Its impalpable vastness, 
through which time scarcely flows, is thronged by 
the shapes of unborn souls who know that at 
birth they must lose these shapes and tahe on 
humanity. Apparitions they are, yet not aUff'* 
gether so. For the prescience of life, which alone 
gives them being, is upon them : a prescience now 
mingled with awe and terror. For swaying and 
clinging to each other they are looking off into an 
unfathomable Darkness through which thousands 
of phantom forms of the newly dead are drifting. 
And this drift of ghosts at times becomes denser 

87 



88 THE UNBORN 

as the wounded and shattered and starved from 

earth's battlefields glide pallid by. 
[The unborn are at last unable to endure the sight 

in silence. A pale shuddering surges over them 

and their leaders begin variously to speak.] 
The First. Myriads! 
The Second. Slain and starven! 

The Third. Slain and frozen 1 

And drifting out of life — to which we go ! 

Drifting, there, on the dark winds of death 

Whose void is deeper than the Universe. 
[The throng crouch from the sight, hiding their 

faces.] 

It should not be. It is too horrible. 
The Second. Birth into bitterness — then death 
and drifting! 

This womb, that is before the womb, is better, 

Tho here we know but pallor and premonition. 

Have we sought life that we should suffer it? 

God should not send us to it. 
The Second [to all]. He should spare us. 



THE UNBORN 89 

[They lift a great moan.] 
Yes, spare us birth — that leads only to death. 
So shall we, who are humanity-to-be, 
Shall we, oh souls unborn, not dare to tell Him ? 
[They look up, gazing at him and at themselves. 
Then at length groups grasp his words and arise 
crying : ] 
Some. Yes, we will tell Him ! 
Others. He shall pity us ! 

Humanity should vanish — it is inhuman, 
A deathward stream of cruelty and woe. 
Yet Others [suddenly aware of His absence, with 
terror] . 
We cannot tell Him. He has forsaken us. 
His Immanence is as a wind that was. 
[In dismay and confusion they flutter — then turn 
to First Leader: for he alone has heard all, 
undistr aught.] 
Some. Where is He? where? 
Others. Tell us! Is it forever? 

First Leader [not answering till they are calmer]. 



90 THE UNBORN 

He has withdrawn a little while to earth. 
Second Leader [bitterly]. To drive these drifting 
millions so to death ? 

[The slain surge by.] 
The First. You speak so, thinking life is pain 
alone. 
Nor see how in these faces swept and swirled 
Innumerably there is an ecstasy 
As of immortal dreams; a hushless hope, 
A beauty of great daring and enduring. 
Is there not some transcendence then of life, 
Some anodyne that makes its agony 
Dearer than our dim void of impotence? 
[They are moved: but another vast gust of the 
dead undoes them.] 
Many. No, no, life is despair. From the begin- 
ning 
The unborn have shrunk from birth, and to the 

end 
They will shrink. 
Many Others. And that Darkness is forever! 



THE UNBORN 91 

The dead but drift the deeper into it. 
Let us rebel and ask extinction now! 
Second Leader [wildly]. Yes, let us rebel! let 
us rebel I 

[They surge around him.] 
For God's impenetrable aspiration 
May destine some to happy planes of beauty 
Above the beat of pain, but we are many 
Who bear ever the weary mortal weight 
Of the world's vain and universal woe. 
Cries [from all sides]. Where is He then? where 

is He? 
Others. Where! for . . . Oh! . . . 

[A thought has pierced them.] 
Perhaps He never was! 
Second Leader [wildlier]. So! It is so! 

[Terror takes them.] 
He never was! There is no God! There is 

none! 
From birthlessness we are swept into birth, 
Where Chance alone invests humanity 



92 THE UNBORN 

With duping spirit-tentacles to cling 
To life with — Chance alone ! There is no God ! 
[Fear, Hope and Despair play over them.] 
Some. What shall we do then ? what ? 
Others [frantically]. Let us be free! 

Let us, eluding life, leap to the dead, 
Forth thro the suicidal universe 
Of Darkness! 
Others. Free! free! Let us leap free! 

[They run in hosts to the brink of the Dark and 
leap into it — heedlessly upon each other, in 
wide disarray. But vainly, for a wave of it 
wafts them hack to their place.] 
The First Le.\der [when strewn and spent they lie 
there wailing]. 
Ignorant is your deed and unavailing. 
Never shall any reach in coward ways 
To mastery — or to end — of his existence. 
And lo, the prescient moment of our birth 
Is trembling out of eternity — is here. 
[The Immanent has filled the place again as he 



THE UNBORN 93 

speaks — and the invisible winds of birth begin 
to blow. The unborn are swept to earth, and 
from there, as they vanish, the weak birth- 
whimper of a child is wafted back.] 



BROTHER BEASTS 

Winter is here 
And there are no leaves 
On the naked trees, 
Save stars twinkling 
As the v^rind blows. 
Soft to the branches 
The little screech-owl 
Silently comes, 
Silently goes, 
With weird tremolos. 



I would go out 
And gather the stars 
The wind shakes down. 
Were they not scattered 
94 



BROTHER BEASTS 95 

So far in the West. 
I would go ask 
The little screech-owl 
If he finds ease 
There in his nest 
After his quest. 

I would go learn 
If the small gray mouse 
Who sets up house 
In the frozen meadow 
Dreams of the stars. 
Or what he thinks 
There in the dark, 
When flake on flake 
Of white snow bars 
Him in with its spars. 

I would go out 

And learn these things 

That I may know 



96 BROTHER BEASTS 

What dream or desire 
Troubles my brothers 
In nest or hole. 
For even as I 
The owl and the mouse, 
Or blinded mole 
With unborn soul, 
May have some goal. 



A WOMAN WRONGED 

I am dead and in my grave. 

Let me alone. 

The seeping of rains down thro me, 

And the reaching of roots down after me, 

And the skimming of leaves above me, are enough. 

Let me alone. 

You have had your will of me, 

So wherefore, now, 

Should your questions creep here to me, 

And the roots of your doubt reach at me, 

And your thoughts restively skim and shudder above 

me? 
Let me alone. 

W6uld you rifle the grave, too ? 

97 



98 A WOMAN WRONGED 

Go away. 

I have nothing left for your taking. 

My hair is not gold, but dust now. 

My eyes are not stars, but stillness. 

My flesh is not beauty aflame, but very cool. 

Let me alone. 



TO A SOLITARY SEA-GULL 

Lone white gull with sickle wings, 
You reap for the heart inscrutable things: 
Sorrow of mists and surf of the shore, 
Winds that sigh of the nevermore; 
Fret of foam and flurry of rain, 
Swept far over the troubled tide; 
Maths of mystery and grey pain 
The sea's voice ever yields, beside. 
Lone white gull, you reap for the heart 
Life's most sad and inscrutable part. 



99 



INEFFABLE THINGS 

The little song-sparrow is gone 
And the summer is nearly ended, 
The rill of his song was a happy rift 
In the surging sound of the sea. 
The swallow is lingering on, 
And the silvery swift sandpiper, 
And I — tho I know my saddened heart 
Has lost an ineffable thing, 
That summer no more can bring. 

With the first bay-leaves that flung 
Their scent to me by the billows, 
I twined some faith, some trust, 
As glad as the sparrow's song. 
And the terns that darted among 
The tides seemed weaving for me 

100 



INEFFABLE THINGS 101 

Impalpable wings of peace and hope — 
That now have taken flight 
Beyond the day and the night. 

Ah, Life, you have known my plea 

For sun and the tide of fortune, 

For winds to waken my sail and bear 

Me joyously over the world. 

Know too how much of your fog 

And storm and rain I will suffer. 

If only you do not sweep from me 
The dear ineffable things, 
To which your fragrance clings. 



KATENKA'S LOVER 

(Russia) 

Little Katenka took twelve weeds 
And wove them into a wreath for her hair; 
Buttercup, rattray and marguerite, 
Parsley, clover and nettle were there. 
*' I want to behold in dreams," she said, 
" In magic dreams my destined lover! " 
And . . . she did; for a weed bane-bred 
Brought dreams to little Katenka! 

Deep dreams ! so now the ikoned priests 
Have carried her, at the funeral hour, 
Out to her princely lover. Death, 
In the ever-blossoming earth, his bower. 
And she shall never again desire, 
102 



KATENKA'S LOVER 103 

But only lie in his arms dreaming . . . 
Little Katenka, in a bride-tire 
Of peace — little Katenka ! 



A MOTHER 

(At night) 

Rain on the maples, 
Out of my window, 
Beating . . . 
Rain in my heart. 
From clouds of grief 
Within me . . . 
Because a new grave. 
My baby^s grave, 
In the darkness, 
Seems so little 
And the cradle of earth 
So heedless I 



104 



GIVE OVER, O SEAl 

Give over, O sea! You never shall reach Nirvana I 
Vour tides, like the tidal generations, ever shall rise 

and fall, 
And your infinite waves find birth, rebirth, and bil- 
lowy dissolution. 

The years of your existence are unending. 

The years of your unresting are forever. 

The sun, who is desire, ever begets in you his pas- 
sion, 

And the moon is ever drawing you, with silvery soft 
alluring. 

To surge and sway, to wander and fret, to waste 
yourself in foam. 

So Buddha-calm shall never descend upon you. 

105 



106 GIVE OVER, O SEA 

And tho it may often seem, for a little while, you 
have found the Way, 

Your tempest-sins return and quicken to wild rein- 
carnations. 

And again great life, pulsing and perilous. 

Omnipotent life, that ever resurges thro the universe, 

Lashes you back to striving, back to yearning, back 
to speech, 

To utterance on all shores of the world of things 
unutterable. 

Give over then, you never shall reach Nirvai\al 

Nor I, who am your acolyte for a moment; 

Who swing a censer of fragrant words before your 
priestly feet, 

That tread these altar-rocks, bedraped with weeds 
gently afloat. 

And with the fluttering wings of gulls ever mysteri- 
ous. 

Give over and call your winds again to join you ! 



GIVE OVER, O SEA 107 

O chanter of deep enchantments, of uncharted lit- 
anies, 
Call them and bid them say with you that life tran- 
scends retreat, 
And that, in the temple of its Immanence, 
There is no peace that does not spring daily from 

peacelessness) 
And no Nirvana save in the lee of storm. 



THE NUN 

A lone palm leans in the moonlight, 

Over a convent wall. 
The sea below is waking and breaking 

With a calm heave and fall. 
A young nun sits at a window; 

For Heaven she is too fair; 
Yet even the dove of God might nest 

In her bosom beating there. 

A lone ship sails from the harbor: 

Whom does it bear away? 
Her lover who, sin-hearted, has parted 

And left her but to pray? 
She has no lover, nor ever 

Has heard afar lovers sigh. 
108 



THE NUN 109 

Only the Convent's vesper vow 
Has ever dimmed her eye. 

For naught knows she of her beauty, 

More than the palm of its peace : 
And none shall cross her portal, to mortal 

Desires to bend her knees. 
The ways of the world have flowers, 

And any who will pluck those; 
But in His hand, against all harm, 

God still will keep some rose. 



A RHAPSODIST'S SONG 

All the birds shall sing to me, 

When I reach Heaven. 

All the leaves shall dance for me, 

Seven times seven. 

All the rills of bliss shall run, 

Cloud-free, from out its sun; 

All the flowers of all bowers. 

Pour me fragrance, hours and hours; 

All the air I breathe shall be 

Joy's sweet leaven. 

Mystic apples shall I pluck 
For my soul's feeding. 
On a green palm-bed I'll lie, 
Man and God reading. 
I will fan me with the wings 
110 



A RHAPSODIST'S SONG 111 

Of my own imaginings ; 
And, to dally down each alley 
Of its dream-enverdured valley, 
I will follow every breeze 
Languorously leading. 

When I wish, too, I will scale 

Tops of mountain beauty. 

I will learn how dawns are made, 

How stars do their duty. 

I will hold the high moon's sphere 

Oft to my attentive ear. 

And each comet, trailing from it 

Leagues of light, shall be a plummet 

For my soul thro deeps of space 

Strewn with death's booty. 

Yes, I'll do this every day, 
In the vales of Heaven. 
For my need of it will be 
Seven times seven: 



112 A RHAPSODIST'S SONG 

Need of birds and mystic rills, 
Need of apples for soul-ills; 
Need of vision, where elysian 
Dews shall star my heart's decision 
To delight in love — and in 
Life Immortal's leaven. 



INSULATION 

The telephone lines, 
Etched by the lightning's needle 
On the night plate of her window, 
Seemed but as strands of a dream's phosphorescence 
Flashed rippling to her out of the drench of the 
darkness. 

Yet one of them was bearing, 
Past her, thro the wet shimmer of the shower, 
The sinuous words — her husband's to his mis- 
tress — 
" Tonight, my passion-flower! " 



113 



ISEULT OF IRELAND 

(By Tristram dead, in the halls of Iseult of 
Brittany) 

I will go up to a high tower 

And gaze over the sea, 
Letting my thoughts as gulls fly, 

Utterly, utterly. 

And if the wind beats them back 

Against cliff and tower, 
Breaking their wings, blinding them. 

Hour after hour; 

Breaking their wings, blinding them, — 

At least one may reach 
Across Death, my Tristram, 

And tremblingly beseech, 
114 



ISEULT OF IRELAND 115 

That you will tell me if in truth 

You loved me only thro 
The potion that we drank — or for 

My own self too ! 

For this Iseult of the White Hand 

Is all, all too fair! 
I will go up to a high tower 

And ask the winds there. 



TO 

A year ago you died, 

And we bore you, palely cof&ned, 

Down to a darkened room. 

And you lay there — still as snow 

On a forgotten tomb. 

Your three-year baby said, 
" Who's in that box down stairs? " 
Then, innocent of the dead, 
While the hot tears choked us, 
*' I know. It is my mother, 
I saw my mother's head ! " 

We did not let him kiss you, 
We did not let him clasp you, 
116 



TO 117 

And the hearse came; the clod; 
And he laughed — at the flowers. 
How far it is to God I 



THE HILLS I HAVE NEVER REACHED 

The hills I have never reached 

Lie ever before my eyes. 
Wherever I am, wherever I go, 

They rest on the rim of the skies. 
And they lead my longing forth, 

The unutterable in me. 
To seek for all I have ever dreamed 

Beauty or joy could be. 

The hills I have never reached 

Lie always in my sight, 
Swathed in the tender mystery 

Of unattainable light. 
And the hue of them is hope, 

The shape of them, despair; 
Their distance ever unwaning — for 

Heart never reaches there. 
118 



THE HALF-BREED 

Let me go back again, 
For want of it comes over me, 
Back to wilds of Pima 
And wastes of Maricopa. 
There with desert under me 
And desert night to cover me, 
Night, with the cactus stars 
To prick and spur me on, 
Let me by my tribe stray, 
A far-ranging rover be, 
With no pale-face lodges 
Between me and the dawn. 

Let me go back again, 

For Yaqui blood awakes in me, 
Let me, free of tethering. 
Of toil and creed and cavil, 
119 



120 THE HALF-BREED 

Out with the coyote go, 
For now his crying aches in me — 

Out across the mesa 

That knows but hunger-law — 
Out, with the winds to walk. 
Till every bondage breaks in me, 

Till the Red blood in me 

The White begins to thaw. 

Let me go back again. 
For soul's of little use to me. 
Soul and smoky hoping 
For Hunting-Grounds Immortal. 
From their blind sting and strife 
They never grant a truce to me. 
Never send a pause-hour 
To string the beads of peace, 
Never let the trail end, 
With time and tepee loose to me. 
Never let tomorrow 
Unborn and troubling cease. 



THE HALF-BREED 121 

Let me go back, then, 
For cities can but sicken me, 

Soiling and eclipsing 

Sun, moon and all the seasons. 
Let me go where silences 
And savage loneness quicken me, 

Even as the void waste 

No foot has ever trod. 
Let me go where primal thirsts 
Thew my heart and thicken me 

'Gainst the throes of thinking, 

'Gainst the goads of God. 



THE RIDE 

I saw a young spirit wildly astride 
Of the new moon ride, ride and ride — 
Into the clouds and over the stars, 
Down the West and away! 

His hair was streaming, a silver mist. 
And meteor reins were around his wrist. 
Whence was he going and where no word 
Of earth can ever say ! 

And yet I know that the swift white fire 
Bearing him on was the world's desire : 
So after him wildly rapt I rode, 
Almost down to the day! 



122 



THE FARING OF FA-HIEN 

Thro Gobiland's sea of sand, 
Where pilgrim bones are mile-stones, 
Where no birds sing, no beasts run, 
Where there is only sun and sun. 
Went Fa-Hien. 

He was faring, a monk of Han, 

Out thro the desert, past Khotan; 

Thro hot winds and demon sands, 

That haunted the way in swirling bands, 

He was going to Buddha lands. 

Was Fa-Hien. 

His camel was chosen at Changgan, 
His place was bought in the caravan. 
" All is maya, a dream of man," 
123 



124 THE FARING OF FA-HIEN 

He said as the desert sea began, 
And said it again as the hot sea ran, 
Did Fa-Hien. 

For the air was thirst, the sun desire, 
And his blood became a passion fire. 
He saw cool waves and soft-limbed slaves. 
As only a man can see who craves. 
" From woman nothing truly saves," 
Thought Fa-Hien. 

But soon they vanished, one and all, 

When he had reached Khotan's sure wall. 

For stealing from its mystic calm 

He thought he felt Lord Buddha's *' Om " 

Laid on his spirit like a balm, 

Did Fa-Hien. 

So on, thro perilous Hindu Kush, 
Down to the Indus did he push, 
Down rock-steeps, wild and hilly. 
To where the Ganges flows stilly. 



THE FARING OF FA-HIEN 125 

For he was fain of the Lotos-lily, — 
Fa-Hien. 

Yes, fain in the place of Buddha's birth 

To find the Way of Priceless Worth; 

In Kohana to reach Nirvana 

And take back thence some secret mana — 

For it is here, surely here, 

Mused Fa-Hien. 

And so, ten years, of monk and sage 

He questioned, scarming the sutras' page; 

And miracle — and magic too 

He wandered thro and pondered thro, 

Till spent he said, " No Creed will do," 

Did Fa-Hien. 

Then old light thro him sifted back. 
And life no more was twaya-black. 
" Nirvana's far from all who preach it; 
But the world's near and I can reach it; 



126 THE FARING OF FA-HIEN 

Give to me then what's good for men," 
Said Fa-Hien. 

So forth he sailed from Ganges' mouth 
To that fair emerald in the South, 
To far Ceylon, and thence fared on, 
Thro desert seas, past night and dawn, — 
His camel a ship, by the winds drawn, 
Did Fa-Hien. 

And back to the tawny Yangszte came. 
Where life was teeming ever the same. 
And when his junk, with the tide drunk, 
Was moored, he said, "I'm still a monk. 
But I am a man who trust time's plan, 
I Fa-Hien." 



A LOVER, DECEIVED 

I 

One Day 

Is it the sea crying, or the gray gulls? 
Is it the wind 
On the wet beach sands? 
Or is it a phantom desire's unrest that pulls 
At the heart of me, with lone invisible hands? 



The air is wings, all wings. . . . Would the world 
were! 

The sea is a tide 
Ebbing away. 
But oh how slow the pulses in me stir, 
How long the wingless stagnant moments stay! 

127 



128 A LOVER, DECEIVED 

And now come rain and fog like dirge and cloth 

To enshroud all passion — 

They and the bell — 
The bleak buoy-bell. ... It does not matter : loath, 
All loath am I for what the world calls well. 

Oh love that is deceived : that trusted deep 

And now is only 

A craving cry! 
That could not one dear face from falseness keep, 
And so finds all life's beauty but a lie. 

II 

Another 

Who has hushed the sea's heart? 

Calm it is and still; 

With no gulls crying, 

And no wind's wine, 
With islands like gray dreams 

Beyond desire lying. 



A LOVER, DECEIVED 129 

Who has hushed the sea's heart? 
Let Him hush mine! 

Who has hushed the sea's heart ? 

Passion is a surf 

That breaks thro my being 

And beats in my breast. 
From its lone pain-sway 

Is there no fleeing? 
Who has hushed the sea's heart? 

I too would rest! 



AT THE DANCE 

(A blind husband speaks) 
There amid the dancers 
All may see her glide ; 
I alone with blind eyes 
Stare into the throng. 
Thickly comes the music ; 
Many on its tide 
Bear her beauty by me 
Charmed hours long. 

All the lights are rapture, 
Every breath is joy; 
That even blind eyes 
Can feel with sense averse. 
Oh to strike the dance dead, 
Suddenly destroy 
130 



AT THE DANCE 131 

Rh}i:hm to its last source 
In the Universe! 

For with rhythm passion 
Wakes, in every breast. 
It is Nature's love-throb 
Luring all the world. 
Atoms answer to it, 
Dance and never rest. 
May not bliss forbidden 
Thro her too be swirled ? 

Shame — shame upon me! 
Deeper rhythms sound 
In her from my blind eyes 
Than to earth belong. 
All may look upon her, 
Many lead her round; 
I alone have brought her 
Love's star-circling song. 



HER GOD 

You think I came out to the wood with you 

To take my April fill 
Of leaves not love ? Then know, my dear, 

A futile and vain ant-hill 
Of hope was that, dug grain on grain 

Out of your heart's quick sod. 
And yet . . . tho I have trampled it, 

I still shall be your god. 
You think I came out to the wood with you 

To murmur in the shade? 
Only that? Not I, my dear; 

So now . . . you're not a maid. 
My want has had its veriest will. 

Nor fears remorse's rod; 
So whether I love, or love you not, 

I still shall be your god. 
132 



DANSE MACABRE 

(Suggested by old pictures) 

I heard a great rattle of bones in the night, 
And saw the dead rise from the earth — a sight ! 
They carried them lanterns of will-o'-the-wisps, 
And their speech cackled and broke with lisps. 

They flung shrouds off and got in a ring, 
And knuckle to knuckle I saw them spring. 
Their hair blew off, and skull to skull 
They gabbled and danced, interminable. 

And thigh-bone rattled with bone of thigh. 
As tooth and tongue were spat at the sky. 
And they chaunted a chilly, gibbering chaunt 
Of how the dead have never a want. 

133 



134 DANSE MACABRE 

" For what want we of the Universe, 
We who have six full feet of clay 
To be for our cuddling bones a nurse," 
They clacked in a rasping roundelay. 

" What want we of the Universe? 
We lie in the dust there snug and still ; 
And the quick may have their better or worse : 
We have what 's best — we have our will." 

So with cackle, gabble and dance, 

With rattle of joints and Jig and scream, 

Then back to their graves with skitter and glance 

They dropt. Zounds! what an idiot dream! 



A NORSE SONG 

Along the coasts of Nevermore 
A lone loon cries, 
The gray loon Despair, 
With a heart that cannot rest. 
His wail is the world's wail 
For youth that never dies; 
And I have listened to it 
Till the tears are in my eyes. 

Along the coasts of Nevermore, 
Past all return, 

Youth's years are gone from me, 
As all joys go. 
Thro the lone fiords 
Of its yesterdays I yearn, 
But only find Despair's wild woe. 
135 



MOOX-FLIGHT 

That wingless bird, the moon, 
With silvery phantom breast, 
Flutters around the earth 
And cannot find a nest. 
Her mystic plumes are moulted 
Each month, and dropt to men. 
But ever does nest-yearning bring 
Their beauty back again. 



136 



THE RESURRECTION ACCORDING TO 
THOMAS 

Jesus Christ woke in the tomb 

Of Joseph of Arimathea, 
From death as he thought, for nigh three days 

Had drawn over Judea: 
Nigh three days that his soul had counted, 

Somehow, under his trance. 
Yet he was troubled, for of the dead 

He brought no circumstance. 

Jesus Christ cared for his wounds 

That Nature had set healing, 
And walked out under the stars of dawn. 

Like a white spirit stealing. 
He slipped from the sight of three women 

Who sought his tomb to moan, 
137 



138 RESURRECTION ACCORDING TO THOMAS 
And heard them saying, " Lo, an angel 
Has rolled away the stone! " 

Jesus Christ went thro the fields 

At twilight to Emmaus. 
Much changed he was, as he broke bread 

With two — whose hearts were chaos 
When he had gone and they of a sudden 

Knew that it was he. 
And he shook as he heard their cry, " O grave, 

Where is thy victory ! " 

Jesus Christ to the twelve appeared. 

The twelve, save one, Judas; 
Then fully died : for his wounds were wrung 

With doubt lest he delude us; 
For he knew not whether his lone dying 

That day, on the cross. 
Was death indeed. And all we know 

Is grief for him and loss! 



ROSE AND LOTUS 

Rose, rose, flower of Christ, 
And lotus, flower of Buddha, 
Make a new beauty for the world 
Of your petals intertwined. 
Give your color, your desire, 
Rose, that the lotus may aspire. 
Give your patience and your peace, 
Lotus, for the rose's ease. 
Of your petals intertwined 
Make a new beauty for the world. 
Rose and lotus, set your mind 
To this gift for mortal kind. 



139 



ATAVISM 

I leant out over a ledging cliff and looked down into 
the sea, 

Where weed and kelp and dulse swayed, in green 
translucency; 

Where the abalone clung to the rock and the star- 
fish lay about, 

Purpling the sands that slid away under the silver 
trout. 



And the sea-urchin too was there, and the sea- 
anemone. 

It was a world of watery shapes and hues and wiz- 
ardry. 

And I felt old stirrings wake in me, under the tides 
of time, 

140 



ATAVISM 141 

Sea-hauntings I had brought with me out of the 
ancient slime. 

And now, as I muse, I cannot rid my senses of the 

spell 
That in a tidal trance all things around me drift 

and swell 
Under the sea of the Universe, down into which 

strange eyes 
Keep peering at me, as I peered, with wonder and 

surmise. 



STRANGENESS 

(In Spring) 

How strange that I should care 
Whether my heart expresses 

The witching mysteries that lair 
In the wind's soft caresses. 

How strange that I should long 
To leash in speech undying 

The wood-wild evanescent throng 
Of odors round me flying. 

How strange that I should hear 
A bird-note, then think heaven, 

Or earth itself, could be made clear 
With six right words — or seven! 
142 



FORECAST 

There will be storm: the rough tides moan, 
The wild torn kelp is shoreward blown, 
The foaming sands with rubble are strown. 
The cormorant cries on the rocks alone. 

There will be storm : the dark wrack blends 
With winds that never have been man's friends, 
With missing beats the bell-buoy sends, 
With ships that pass to unknown ends. 



143 



THE CLOSED GATES 

O who has closed the gates of the world ■ 

The sea-gates flowing free, 
The mountain-gates and the hill-gates 

God made for all that be? 
There's never a land about the globe 

By Him shut from another; 
For every Strait and Stream and Pass 

Points each man to his brother. 

O who has closed the gates of the world 
From coast to farther coast? 

From Caucasus to crested Alps 
That tower, a snowy host ? 

There's never a one that has not seen 
Blood stream and armies perish 
144 



THE CLOSED GATES 145 

For freedom; so who will not, now, 
W orld-f leedom for them cherish? 

Yea, who has closed the gates of the world, 

The gates that now are mined 
And armed and guarded, day and night. 

Except to sea and wind ? 
There's never a least but war has shut 

On innocence left dying. 
Nor will long years of penitence 

Avail to hush that sighing. 

Ay, who has closed the gates of the world. 

Where food to the poor came thro, 
Where every foot that tread in peace 

Knits men to men anew? 
Dear God, our human blood is one 

And thro your heart is flowing ; 
Purge, purge it then, and open again 

The gates to all men's going ! 



AN AUSTRIAN PRISONER 

(On trial in the Trentino) 

Reap ? we reap but as we sow ? 
Lies ! the seed of the past is in us. 
Springing up in a heart will grow 
The deeds of a thousand years ago. 

Hang me then, if so you will, 
For raping her; but first say whether 
Some wild Hun on a Roman hill 
Was not in my passion still ? 

Some wild Hun who too was led 
Over the Alps, starved and frozen, 
Dearthed, like me, till shame was dead 
Me in whom this lust was bred ? 
146 



AN AUSTRIAN PRISONER 147 

Dearthed and driven, until unwary, 
Torn from home and torn from pleasure, 
He would have seized the Virgin Mary. 
Desperate men are not more chary. 

Hang me then: but hang the Past! 
Let curst War die guilty with me. 
For as long as its day shall last 
Any man may so break fast. 



EASTER SNOW 

Snow on the gold 

Of my jonquils falling, 

In white confusion. 

Was Spring, glad 

In young green, yesterday, 

But a delusion? 

Snow on the Easter bells 
Wildly ringing 
Christ the arisen. 
Can their peal 
Shake it away? 
Is death a prison? 

Half the world fears so, 
Half, hopes; 
148 



EASTER SNOW 149 

All the world wonders. 
Ah, sad snow! 
All we can know 
Is that death sunders! 



A WOOD-MOMENT 

In the green hush of the wood 

A bubble of bird-song broke, 
And at the magic word, 

The wind from trance awoke. 
A wild-rose leaned to a bluet, 

A blithe brook-ripple spoke; 
Then came a leafy laughter 

From willow and ash and oak. 

Gaily it ran; then willow 
And ash and oak forgot. 

They had but overheard 

Some wood sprite's amorous plot. 

The rose went back to her bliss, 
The wind sighed, and was not. 
150 



A WOOD-MOMENT 151 

Silence again was the bird's 
And the brook's ecstatic lot. 



POETS THERE ARE 

Poets there are a plenty, who catch at a critic-creed 
And ride the rumor of it to fame, while the world 

waits in need. 
Ever, ever in need of the singer to whom a song is a 

star 
Wrought in the nebulous deeps of the heart where the 

great song-passions are. 

Poets there are a plenty, who sell their souls to the 

new, 
And cry it as if a thousand years of beauty were 

untrue. 
Yet brief is the vaunt of a singer, whose newness is 

not strong 
With the deep sources of the divine in all immortal 

song. 

152 



" IN PRAISE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

(On his Centenary) 

Away with trivial bays, 

With wreaths and dithyrambs, 

Upon this day of a myriad days 

When a great heart came to walk earth's ways 

And sing it free of shams. 

To sing it free of the pale complaint 

Of souls that will not climb; 

And free of the petty coward taint 

Of the cavillers at Time. 

To gaze so clearly far 

Into its mystic clod 

As to be sure it is a star 

Tilled by the touch of God ! 



153 



OVER THE SANDS 

Over the sands the lightning flashes, 
Veining the sea with sudden fire, 

Startling the gulls where the tide plashes, 
Driving them from their food-desire. 

Over the sands the lightning quivers, 

Over the lonely marsh-rivers. 

Over the night that faintly shivers 
With its ghostly ire. 

Over the sands the moon follows, 
Like a pale boat that seeks to beach 

Her bows in pines — that chilled swallows 
After the storm with wet wings reach. 

Over the sands the moon shimmers, 

Mute mid a host of star-swimmers, 
154 



OVER THE SANDS 155 

Making her port where the West glimmers 
Still, thro the sunset's breach. 



EVANESCENCIES 

The wings of a dream striking along the heart, 

The wind of a star falling impalpably, 

The stillness of a night-leaf, the moon's trance, 

The lapse of time into eternity, 

The mutability, despite our love. 

Of the dear memory of those long gone, — 

These things can shake the spirit more sometimes 

With a great terror of the great UnknowTi, 

Than all earth's long immitigable crimes, 

Than all its historied moan. 



156 



MY ISLAND 

My sea has an island — whose name I do not know. 

The gulls fringe it with their wings, 

From dawn to sun-setting. 
I never cross the tide to it, and never shall — for so 
There's left to me a place where disillusion cannot 

go- 

My sea has an island — whose riches are but rocks, 
That surf alone silvers. 
Or sun and moon shimmer. 
Yet when I'm poor in peace — and at my poverty 

life mocks, 
These riches far transcend wealth the World to me 
unlocks. 



157 



THROUGH HUE AND CRY 

Two hounds will the whole world follow, 
When the rest of the pack are slain, 

Keen Hope a-leap from life's hollow, 
Strong Love that strikes at its pain. 

Two hounds will the world give ear to. 
In the Hunt toward Heart's Desire, 

Strong Love all courses are clear to, 
Keen Hope no peril can tire. 



158 



A PARABLE 

Last night in a phantasmal trance 
I heard the flow of blood in France, 
Slow trickling out of severed veins 
Down to the roots of thirsting plants. 



" Good nurture," said one, " let us drink! '* 
" No! " cried another's lips a-shrink. 
" If God can send it," said a third, 
" We should not be too proud, I think: 



" For, is the earth in which we bide 
Other than blood of men who've died, 
Clotted around the framing bone 
Of millions long since petrified ? " 
159 



160 A PARABLE 

God answered then, for He had heard 
Each hungry and despairing word, 
" Of that blood, children, know this too, 
Each drop within My heart has stirred." 



SENSE-SWEETNESS 

Flowers are dancing, waves playing, pines swaying, 

gulls are a-swarm; 
Sea and heather, sunning together, glad of the 

weather, with God are warm. 

Flowers are dancing, clouds winging, larks singing, 

summer abrew — 
Summer the old ecstatic passion of Life to fashion 

the world anew. 



161 



MOTHER AND SON 

He was not wanted — to my womb 

He came against my will, 
And fed, there, upon bitterness, 

Unborn and soulless still; 
On bitterness, thro nine long moons, 

And on rebellious hate ; 
So when at length I gave him birth 

I gave as well — fate. 

For mother-rapture followed then, 
And pampering thro youth; 

The wrong I did him in the womb 
I doubled by a ruth 

That made me worship him — and all 
Restrainings prostitute 
162 



MOTHER AND SON 163 

To his least passion or desire, 
His least imperious suit. 

So now, to that old bitterness 

He adds a bitter care; 
And, ruined, doubts whether a God 

Has ever heard a prayer; 
Doubts, yet can never lay in him 

The ghost of pale remorse, 
That haunts me too, thro the long years. 

With lone and spectral force. 



ARIEL TO THE AGING SHAKESPEARE 

If, O master, at your heart 

Caliban claws of age creep, 

Call me to come from the air's blue deep, 

Call! 
For I know where dew of youth yet lingers 
On great dreams you hold in thrall. 
Know how to strew your foes with magic, 

All! 
Know to undo the years turned tragic. 
Years that sigh and deathward flow, 
While grieved musings thro your spirit 

Go! 
Call to me then, for swift I'll hear it, 
I, your Ariel, set free. 
But who still your sprite will be ! 

Call! 

164 



PAGAN 

Will the earth-poetry of Greece never die? 
Sitting in the green wood, lonely, was I, 
When I heard a voice sing, centuries away 
From the Vale of Tempe, from the gods' sway : 
April is a naiad 

Slipping from a pool; 
May a leafy dryad 

Hiding in the cool; 
June is a wood-nymph 

Teasing them to play; 
Till comes, later, 

The hot-hearted satyr, 
August, their awaiter. 
To frighten them away! 
Will the earth-poetry of Greece never die ? 
Still for its youth must the whole world sigh? 

165 



PROVIDENCE 

When I was far from the sea's voice and vast- 
ness, 

I looked for God in the days and hours and sea- 
sons. 

But now, by its large and eternal tides surrounded, 

I know I shall only find Him in the greater swing of 
the years. 

For like the sea's are His mysteries, not to be learned 

from a single surf-beat, 
No wave suffices Him for a revelation. 
How like the sea's, that dower all lands with green 

and the breath of blossoms, 
With dews that never have heard its deathless surges. 



166 



PROVIDENCE 167 

Let me be patient, then — sure that stars are not 

jetsam tossing 
On meaningless waters of waste Omnipotence. 
Let me be patient, even when man is sunk in the 

storm of His purpose, 
And swirled, a strangled corpse, under His ages. 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 

I 

When Maisie came to Wraithwood Hill 
She looked back from it to the town, 
Across green tops of pines far down, 
And wondered how her fate would fall. 
Straight from the doorway thro the trees, 
That sighed as only pines can sigh, 
She saw, swathed in the setting light, 
The courthouse tower cut the sky. 
And a pang quivered in her eye. 

She was the bride of Allen Graves, 
Master of Wraithwood and its Hill, 
That rose behind, at the weird will 
Of Nature, into rocky waves. 
168 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 169 

And crevices between the rocks 
Ran dark and deep, under pine glooms, 
Up to the peak, where was a place 
Of family burial — whose nine tombs, 
One yet unfilled, told of life's dooms. 

Allen had won her: for about 

Him was a lure of mystery. 

He had lived solitarily 

At Wraith wood — a romantic Doubt, 

A Speculation for the tongues 

Of the drab little town, when thro 

The streets at times he spurred his roan. 

As if he had some deed to do 

That but an evil spirit knew. 

And now, the bodeful wedding done. 
She looked back with a pang of fear. 
She had left so much that was dear; 
Had she for shadows given the sun ? 
Under that tower, pale, perhaps. 



170 WRAITHWOOD HILL 

Now, with the loss of her, she saw 
The deep eyes of another, whom 
Love with its unrequiting law 
Had left for loneliness to gnaw. 

One she had known from childhood days, 
Quentin Gillespie, a glad boy, 
With whom her girl's heart, in its joy. 
Had first learnt Nature's wilding ways. 
'Twixt the Toll Gate and Crows' Retreat, 
Or by creek windings east and west. 
They knew a hundred happy dells — 
One happier than all the rest, 
Because love there had been confessed. 

Happier till — with Quentin gro\Mi 
To manhood and a hope of fame 
In the Law's corridors — there came 
Allen across her heart, unknown. 
And as a willow wand is drawn 
By darkling water under ground. 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 171 

She to the strange mood of his blood 
Was drawn — and now to him was bound: 
Tho Quentin's wrong could not be drowned. 

It wrung her. . . . But she started, for 
Her bridegroom^s gaze was on her. '* Well ? • ' 
He questioned, with a tone whose spell 
She almost wished now to abhor. 
" Well, is that tower Regret's; and Law 
More tempting than a bridal feast 
For two who from a stench of flowers 
And a mellifluous marriage-priest 
Are for a honeymoon released? " 

She laughed, but somehow shuddered. This 
Was his well wonted way . . . and yet, 
Tuned as she was to reach and get 
His vibrance, there was some Abyss, 
Some more than tempting mystery 
In which his words rang resonant. 
" Allen," she said, " I'm half afraid; 



172 WRAITHWOOD HILL 

Tell me what is it that can haunt 
Me so in you — for oh, I want — " 

She did not finish, for a cloud 
Sullen as that blotting the sun 
Out of the west seemed darkly spun 
Across his mood, a bitter shroud. 
So to bring brightness back, she said, 
" Come, we will have some wine," not know- 
ing 
That of all words flung lightly forth, 
None that were meant for April sowing 
Could bring a more relentless mowing. 

She did not see that as he wheeled 

A duel raged upon his lips, 

A spasm with his soul at grips. 

Or how his eye thirstily reeled. 

They feasted, and the wine went singing 

Into her heart with rilly joy. 

To his, amid her bubbling talk, 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 173 

It crept with madness to destroy, 
As well he knew, their life's alloy. 

For while she lifted to her lips 

The happy foam that set joy free, 

Each silent glass of devilry 

He drained lashed him with sullen whips. 

She babbled till across the wings 

Of her light words a low oath fell. 

" By God, you little fool," he said, 

" Could you not see what was my spell ? 

This drink for me is fire of Hell. 

" I'm drunk, upon my wedding night, 
And I'll be drunker ere the day. 
Not even your soft body's sway 
Can tempt me now this thirst to slight.'' 
He rose and left her in the glitter 
There of the candles and cold glass, 
That seemed to burn or freeze the horror 
Of what had darkly come to pass 
Into her heart's fate-stricken mass. 



174 WRAITHWOOD HILL 



II 



So began life for Maisie Graves — 
Or was it death? The morning came; 
The moon lost all her silver flame, 
The crows flew field ward, hunger slaves. 
The dewy stillness of the pines 
Grew on her eyes that had not closed. 
The Court House clock across cool space 
Rang to her over roofs that dozed. 
A tense sob shook her : then she rose. 

No sound from Allen thro the night 
Had come to her, none came with day. 
Locked fiercely in he drank away 
His soul and reason — and her right, 
Her bridal right, her woman right, 
Her love he swallowed thro those hours : 
While servants tended silently. 
As if compelled by occult powers 
To watch death settle on sweet flowers. 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 175 

Once she threw on her hat to go 
Back to her mother — or to him, 
Who under that clock tower, dim 
Now in the dazzling overflow 
Of the full sun would . . . And yet, no. 
She could not face her mother's plaint, 
A widow's pale and privileged whine; 
And Quentin's hungering restraint 
Was not that of a selfless saint. 

And so she waited, wandered, walked — 
At last among the cone-strewn rocks 
Of Wraithwood Hill ; and by a fox 
Up to its peak unknown was stalked. 
Sudden she came upon that place 
Of burial with its empty tomb 
Agape — and in it almost stept : 
Then fled back shuddering thro the gloom 
Of the pine boles to the sun's room. 

And there, staggering out, he stood 
Before her, on the columned porch, 



176 WHAITHWOOD HILL 

Allen — his eyes a cunning torch, 
And treachery within his mood. 
" You did not go to him? " he said. 
Then ere her lips moved, *' No pale lies. 
You're mine, and if Gillespie dares 
To take what has been in your eyes 
For him today — he's less than wise." 

Which said, back to his drunkenness, 
Till, soberly, on the third night. 
He sought her room : There was no flight; 
Her flesh shone thro a thin night-dress. 
" I ask no pardon," said he, " none. 
I drink, for drink is in my blood. 
The heat of those dead men upon 
The Hill behind us rules my mood : 
They rise in me and want's at flood. 

*' But you — what will you do? Accept 
My love and passion for the whiles 
I am myself ? By winning wiles 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 177 

Ghosts from the blood might oft be kept. 
And this might be our bridal hour ! 
I want you — all your beauty calls 
To me, in drunkenness or free, 
Like trumpets from dream-lifted walls, 
Like music that on yearning falls." 

She heard in terror — heard and shrank 
Back from him, covering her breast 
With arms that ruthlessly were pressed 
Into its beauty — which he drank. 
" Go from me, go: give me again 
My freedom! " shuddering she cried. 
" What in me once was love is now 
A corpse three days have horrified 
With crav/ling moments. Love has died." 

" Or never was, perhaps? " he shrugged. 
And then, " There's time. I'll go tonight. 
But see to it there is no flight, 
No fears by your Gillespie drugged. 



178 WRAITHWOOD HILL 

For half I think he stands between 
Us now — or drink breeds jealousy." 
When he was gone she could not move, 
Till terror took her suddenly, 
Lest he return — and worse things be. 

She locked the door. Then in the moon 
Out of her open window heard 
The wild hoofs of his filly, spurred 
Reckless into the night's deep swoon. 
Asleep at last she fell, to dream 
That she was mother to a child 
Which was a drunkard at her breast, 
And that her sotted husband smiled 
And said, " Like me." She woke half wild. 

Ill 

Then came her friends to look upon 
Her honeymoon and guess its glow. 
They found instead a haunted woe, 
And silence over pale lips drawn. 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 179 

Rumor that panders to all ills 
Was whispering soon — and Quentin heard. 
" A drunkard's bride . . . stricken with fear," 
Was the invariable w^ord 
That in the stream of tattle stirred. 

So as forlorn, at a day's close, 
She stood beside the sullen brook, 
Half-circling Wraithwood with its hook 
Of rainy waters, Quentin rose. 
" Maisie, I had to come," he said. 
" You are unhappy! Oh, my God, 
Why did you leave me ! Will you come 
Away with me? " . . . The oozy sod 
Under her feet held her fear-shod. 

Yet for a moment she reached out 

Her arms to him, and " Quentin! " cried. 

But as he leapt swift to her side. 

Terror became for her too stout. 

And so she fled, stumbling and falling, 



180 WRAITHWOOD HILL 

Rising and stumbling once again. 
Aware, she knew not how, that Allen 
Had heard, and from that guilty fen, 
His heart, would some wild deed unpen. 

She knew — and yet, strangling and weeping, 

As the hysteric moment hung. 

She ran, her heart and knees unstrung, 

Across her eyes wet branches sweeping. 

She felt a flower crush beneath 

Her foot into the sobbing soil. 

Then a shot rang, and Quentin's life, 

Under her feet, a bloody moil, 

She seemed to trample in wild toil. 

Fainting she fell at last within 
Her chamber — all her terror still; 
It was as if Death had his will. 
Or as if breath had never been. 
The minutes passed then, till a step. 
That fell in stealth upon the stair 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 181 

Without, went thro her frigid frame, 
A vibrant prescience in the air 
Of him whose crime had laid her there. 

She moaned. He entered — blood upon 
His hand and cheek that bore no wound; 
And horror's desperation runed 
His haggard look, drunken and drawn. 
" Get up," he cursed her, " there's no time. 
Damn you, I must be gone from here. 
And you must stay " — her eyes unclosed — 
" Stay and do all you can to clear ..." 
She saw the blood and screamed with fear. 

" What have you done ! what have you done ! " 

He wiped a finger of its blood; 

Then a cold mockery seemed to flood 

His drunken sense, and thro it run. 

*' Oh, you have killed him! " At the words 

He straightened. In the pines without 

A dark wind went. It seemed like death 



182 WRAITHWOOD HILL 

To Maisie, like the moaning shout 
Of Quentin's soul, gone out, gone out! 

She tried to move — toward the door. 
Was Quentin killed? oh, was he? oh! 
Her soul was swimming in blind woe, 
A sea beneath her was the floor. 
Then thro her suddenly the stare 
Of Allen went, searching her eyes. 
A dark hate and a drunken light 
Of new suspicion seemed to rise 
Thro him, and cunning — coldly wise. 

It broke, " You'll go with me, not stay, 
And treacherously tell! Get ready! " 
Rage made his tongue a moment steady. 
Maisie was like a reed asway. 
And yet she knew that she must go 
There to the brook and see ! Her hair 
Fell as she fled him, ere he knew. 
And found her foot upon the stair. 
His following with fuddled care. 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 183 

He overtook her at the gate. 
*' Run? you would run away and tell? 
I'll put you where you will be well 
Away from words — and power to prate." 
By her hair-tangled wrist he drew 
Her then: the pines were moaning, moaning, 
And the new moon hung in the West, 
Like a cold blade some hand was honing 
Against the clouds, for an atoning. 

He forced her feet up the dark path 
Toward the Hill's summit — and the tombs. 
Horror was in its rocky glooms; 
She wept, she pled against his wrath. 
The night things all seemed listening 
Around her, hostile, frightened, wild. 
A startled owl swept past, and with 
A hoot their stumbling way reviled: 
Thro Allen's teeth one curse more filed. 

At last they reached it — that death-place, 
Where the wind wilder went — and where 



184 WRAITHWOOD HILL 

The shadows on the nine stones there 
Danced like dark ghosts, then sank apace. 
Maisie cried out, trembling and shaking, 
For now she knew. In that void tomb 
He meant to put her, in that one 
Digged for his final resting-room. . . . 
Her swooning did not stay the doom. 

IV 

Such nights have been — and that night was. 
The hand that whetted the sharp moon 
For sacrifice had drawn it soon 
Down thro the stars : then came a pause. 
An hour : yet Maisie had not moved. 
Then a chill pierced her heart and fluttered 
Her pulseless lids; a troubled sigh 
Thro her insensate lips was uttered, 
Such as the pines above her muttered. 

Then her eyes opened. Where was she? 
Only the darkness and dank stone; 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 185 

And somewhere still that low pine-moan, 
Familiar, yet . . . where could she be ? 
A drop fell on her from the slab 
Over her head — then memory 
Let in, on her oblivion, 
A drop which set those terrors free 
That swept her to insentiency. 

Those terrors of the nine death-stones. 

Where now she knew she was shut in, 

By Allen's wild and drunken sin. 

Under the earth beside dead bones, 

She sought to rise and struck her brow 

Against the slab that covered her. 

The pain and horror as she fell 

Took from her limbs the strength to stir — 

And left wraiths where no true wraiths were. 

For thro the tombs around her those 
Forebears of Allen seemed to ooze, 
And their pale shape to interfuse 



186 WRAITHWOOD HILL 

With all her body's haunted throes. 
Their deathly inebriety 
So wrought upon her that a shriek 
Broke from her lips, despite all terror, 
And then another, till fear-weak, 
Life once more from her seemed to leak. 

But death, the swiftest of all things, 

Can be so lingeringly slow 

That time seems cruelty a-flow 

Out of eternity's dry springs. 

And so for Maisie to and fro 

Came trance and terror — came and went, 

Till the last beat within her veins 

Was frozen, its cold anguish spent. 

And in sure Silence she was pent. 

They found her — after Quentin's death 
Had set the quest a-cry. Her hair 
Was dewed with the damp dripping there. 
Her sweet lips absent of all breath. 



WRAITHWOOD HILL 187 

Under the pines they bore her down, 
Tenderly, by each rocky place 
Whence wild flowers leaned with swaying sigh 
To look into her passing face 
And say above her a still grace. 

And now Wraithwood is tenantless, 
Save for the fox — and, it is said. 
For stealthier footsteps of the dead 
That sometimes sadly round it press. 
For Murder is a landlord none 
Will lease from save the neediest. 
So the town clock a verdict still 
Strikes thro each unforgetting breast 
Of that dark night's forlorn inquest. 



THE END 



Earth and New Earth 

By CALE YOUNG RICE 

America has to-day no poet who so truly answers 
the multiplex tests of poetry as does Cale Young 
Rice. . . . He is a robust genius, a voluminous 
producer. Given quality, sustained and wide rang- 
ing composition is a fair test of poetic power. — 
The New York Sun. 

This latest collection shows no diminution in Mr. 
Rice's versatility or power of expression. Its 
poems are serious, keen, distinctively free and 
vitally spiritual in thought. — The Continent (Chi- 
cago). 

Mr. Rice is concerned with thoughts that are more 
than timely; they represent a large vision of the 
world events now transpiring . . . and his affirma- 
tion of the spiritual in such an hour establishes 
him in the immemorial office of the poet-prophet 
. . . The volume is a worthy addition to the large 
amount of his work. — Anna L. Hopper in The 
Louisville Courier-Journal. 

Cale Young Rice is the greatest living American 
poet. — D. F. Hannigan, Lit. Ed. The Rochester 
Post Express. 

The work of Cale Young Rice emerges clearly as 
the most distinguished offering of this country to 
the combined arts of poetry and the drama. 
"Earth and New Earth" strikes a ringing new 
note of the earth which shall be after the war. — 
The Memphis Commercial- Appeal. 

12mo., IS 8 pages, $1.2S net 

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The Collected 
Plays and Poems 

OF 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

The great quality of Cale Young Rice's work is 
that, amid all the distractions and changes of con- 
temporary taste, it remains true to the central 
drift of great poetry. His interests are very wide 
. . . and his books open up a most varied world 
of emotion and romance. — Gilbert Murray. 

These volumes are an anthology wrought by a 
master hand and endowed with perennial vitality. 

. . . This writer is the most distinguished master 
of lyric utterance in the new world . . . and he 
has contributed much to the scanty stock of Amer- 
ican literary fame. Fashions in poetry come and 
go, and minor lights twinkle fitfully as they pass 
in tumultuous review. But these volumes are of 
the things that are eternal in poetic expression. 

. . . They embody the hopes and impulses of uni- 
versal humanity. — The Philadelphia North Amer- 
ican. 

Mr. Rice has been hailed by too many critics as 
the poet of his country, if not of his generation, 
not to create a demand for a full edition of his 
works. — The Hartford (Conn.) Courant. 

This gathering of his forces stamps Mr, Rice as 
one of the world's true poets, remarkable alike 
for strength, versatility and beauty of expression. 
— The Chicago Herald (Ethel M. Colson). 



Any one familiar with "Cloister Lays," "The 
Mystic," etc., does not need to be told that they 
rank with the very best poetry. And Mr. Rice's 
dramas are not equaled by any other American 
author's. . . . The admirable characteristic of his 
work is the understanding of life. . . . And when 
those who are loyal to poetic traditions cherished 
through the whole history of our language con- 
template the anemia and artificiality of contem- 
poraries, they can but assert that Mr. Rice has 
the grasp and sweep, the rhythm, imagery and 
pulsating sympathy, which in wondering admira- 
tion are ascribed to genius. — The Los Angeles 
Times. 

Mr. Rice's poetic dramas have won him highest 
praise. But the universality of his genius is no- 
where more apparent than in his lyrics. . . . For 
sheer grace and loveliness some of these lyrics are 
unsurpassed in modern poetry. — The N. E. Home- 
stead (Springfield, Mass.). 

It is with no undue repetition that we speak of 
the very great range and very great variety of 
Mr. Rice's subject, inspiration, and mode of ex- 
pression. . . . The passage of his spirit is truly 
from deep to deep. — Margaret S. Anderson (The 
Louisville Evening Post). 

In Mr. Rice we have a voice such as America has 
rarely known before. — The Rochester (N. Y.) 
Post Express. 

It is good to find such sincere and beautiful work 
as is in these two volumes. . . . Here is a writer 
with no wish to purchase fame at the price of 
eccentricity of either form or subject. — The Inde- 
pendent. 



Mr. Rice's style is that of the masters. ... He 
will live with our great poets. — Louisville Herald 
(J. J. Cole). 

Mr. Rice is an American by birth, but he is not 
merely an American poet. Over existence and the 
whole world his vision extends. He is a poet of 
human life and his range is uncircumscribed. — 
The Baltimore Evening News. 

Viewing Mr. Rice's plays as a whole, I should say 
that his prime virtue is fecundity or affluence, the 
power to conceive and combine events resource- 
fully, and an abundance of pointed phrases which 
recalls and half restores the great Elisabethans. 
His aptitude for structure is great. — The Nation 
(O. IV. Firkins). 

Mr. Rice has fairly won his singing robes and has 
a right to be ranked with the first of living poets. 
One must read the volumes to get an idea of 
their cosmopolitan breadth and fresh abiding 
charm. . . . The dramas, taken as a whole, rep- 
resent the most important work of the kind that 
has been done by any living writer; . . . This 
work belongs to that great world where the 
mightiest spiritual and intellectual forces are for- 
ever contending; to that deeper life which calls 
for the rarest gifts of poetic expression. — The 
Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry). 

2 Vol. $3.00 net 
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npHE following volumes are now 
included in the author's ''Collected 
Plays and Poems," and are not ob- 
tainable elsewhere : 

At the World's Heart 

Cale Young Rice is highly esteemed by readers 
wherever English is the native speech. — The Man- 
chester {England) Guardian. 

Porzia; A Play 

It matters little that we hesitate between ranking 
Mr. Rice highest as dramatist or lyrist ; what mat- 
ters is that he has the faculty divine beyond any 
living poet of America ; his inspiration is true, 
and his poetry is the real thing. — The London 
Bookman. 

Far Quests 

It shows a wide range of thought, and sympathy, 
and real skill in workmanship, while occasionally 
it rises to heights of simplicity and truth, that 
suggest such inspiration as should mean lasting 
fame. — The Daily Telegraph {London). 

The Immortal Lwre; Four Plays 

It is great art — with great vitality. — James Lane 
Allen. 

Different from Paola and Francesca, but excelling 
it — or any of Stephen Phillips's work — in a vivid 
presentment of a supreme moment in the lives of 
the characters. — The New York Times. 



Many Gods 

These poems are flashingly, glowingly full of the 
East . . . What I am sure of in Mr. Rice is that 
here we have an American poet whom we may 
claim as ours. — William Dean Hozvells, in The 
North American Review. 

Nirrana Days 

Air. Rice has the technical cunning that makes up 
almost the entire equipment of many poets now- 
adays, but human nature is more to him alwaj'S 
. . . and he has the feeling and imaginative sym- 
pathy without which all poetry is but an empty 
and vain thing. — The London Bookman. 

A Night in Avignon: A Play 

It is as vivid as a page from Browning, Mr. Rice 
has the dramatic pulse. — James Hiineker. 

Yolanda of Cyprus; A Play 

It has real life and drama, not merely beautiful 
words, and so differs from the great mass of 
poetic plays. — Prof. Gilbert Murray. 

David; A Play 

It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an English- 
man or a Frenchman, his reputation as his coun- 
try's most distinguished poetic dramatist would 
have been assured by a more universal sign of 
recognition. — The Baltimore News. 

Charles Di Tocca; A Play 

It is the most powerful, vital, and truly tragical 
drama written by an American for some years. 
There is genuine pathos, mighty yet never repel- 
lant passion, great sincerity and penetration, and 
great elevation and beauty of language. — The 
Chicago Post. 

Song-Surf 

Mr. Rice's work betrays wide sympathies with 
nature and life, and a welcome originality of sen- 
timent and metrical harmony. — Sydney Lee. 



Trails Sunward 

By 
CALE YOUNG RICE 

Cale Young Rice has written some of the finest 
poetry of the last decade, and is the author of 
the very best poetic dramas ever written by an 
American. . . . He is one of the few supreme 
lyrists . . . and one of the few remaining lovers 
of beauty . . . who write it. One of the very few 
writers of vers libre who know just what they are 
doing. — The Los Angeles Times. 

Another book by Cale Young Rice . . . one of 
the few poetic geniuses this country has produced. 
... In its sixty or more poems may be found the 
hall mark of individuality that denotes preemi- 
nence and signalizes independence. — The Phila- 
delphia North American. 

Mr. Rice attempts and succeeds in deepening the 
note of his singing . . . keeping its brilliant tech- 
nique, its intricate verse formation, but seeking 
all the while for words to interpret the profound 
things of life. The music of his lines is more per- 
fect than ever, his rhythms fresh and varied. — 
Littell's Living Age. 

Cale Young Rice's work is always simple and sin- 
cere . . . but that does not prevent him from 
voicing his song with passion and virility. Nearly 
all his poems have elevation of thought and feel- 
ing, with beauty of imagery and music. — The New 
York Times. 

Readers familiar with Cale Young Rice's previous 
work realize that he ranks with the very best 
modern poets. — The New Orleans Times-Pica^ 

yune. 



Whether the forms of this book are lyrical, nar- 
rative, or dramatic, there is an excellence of work- 
manship that denotes the master hand. . . . And 
while the range of ideas is broad, the treatment of 
each is distinguished by a strength and beauty re- 
markably fine. — The Continent (Chicago). 

Mr. Rice proves the fine argument of his preface 
. . . for this book has in it form and beauty and 
a full reflection of the externals as well as the 
soul of the America he loves. — The Philadelphia 
Public Ledger. 

The work of this poet always demands and re- 
ceives unstinted admiration. . . . His is not the 
poetic fashion of the moment, but of all poetic 
time. — The Chicago Herald. 

In "Trails Sunward," Mr. Rice demonstrates as 
heretofore the possibility of attaining poetic 
growth and originality, even in the Twentieth 
Century, without extremism. . . . Sanity linked 
w^ith vitality and breadth in art make for per- 
manence, and one can but feel that Mr. Rice builds 
for more than a day. — The Louisville Courier 
Journal. 

I rarely use the term "sublimity," yet in touches 
of "The Foreseers," particularly in its cavern-set 
opening, I should say that Mr. Rice had scaled that 
eminence. — 0. W. Firkins (The Nation). 



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